Cisco hunts small Web businesses

Cisco Systems has announced the first partners in its initiative to bring small and medium-sized businesses onto the Web for e-commerce and hosted or resident applications.

The Cisco Hosted Applications Initiative will create an alliance of service providers, software vendors, system integrators and technology partners that will offer end-to-end solutions to niches within the small and medium-sized business market.

"These are mostly companies that we find are working with slow Internet access-perhaps 10BaseT modems," said Richard Steranka, Cisco's marketing director for small and medium business. "Cisco's aim is to move them toward networking more of their needs and making them more productive." The first service provider partners include GTE, PSINet, AboveNet, Exodus, FutureLink, Breakaway and USinternetworking. Some will host and manage business applications at their site and deliver access to those applications over the Internet or a private network. Others may host applications at third-party co-location facilities.

The applications provided include electronic messaging from United Messaging, Software.com and click2send.com; human resource management programs from Employease; and business management functions from Great Plains and eCompany Network. Business clients also will be able to call on systems integration help from KPMG and technological consulting from Hewlett-Packard, Citrix and Sequent. Microsoft's Internet Customer Unit will also participate.

"This should help push e-commerce into areas relatively untouched by the Web until now," said Kerri Jacobs, an analyst for Tel-Ergy Research. "Many companies in these segments know they need to move onto the Internet for sales or administration, but they are reluctant to incur the cost and confusion that entails. A highly integrated effort such as this should make the notion more palatable-and more affordable."

Tekelec sold two mated pairs of signal transfer points and one node to Williams Communications and one STP mated pair to US LEC. Williams plans to use the equipment, which includes Tekelec's local number portability system, to support voice services on its nationwide network. US LEC will use the equipment for independent access to the national SS7 network and its Advanced Intelligent Network platform.

The New York State Education and Research Network has gone live by delivering Internet2 traffic between universities in Albany, Buffalo, New York, Rochester and Syracuse. The research network is built on the Newbridge MainStreetXpress 36170 multiservices switch.

Intermedia Communications entered an alliance with NorthPoint Communications and Rhythms NetConnections for DSL service.