All e-board: Vendors hop on e-commerce bandwagon-whatever shape it takes

Electronic commerce still may be several years from evolving into the major retail force its advocates predict, but vendors-from both the traditional carrier world and the Internet marketplace-already are lining up to give service providers solutions for the most basic, bottom-line function: billing.

"It's a little like the Wild West out there right now," said Dan Taylor, an analyst for The Yankee Group, Boston. "There's a lot of money to be made, and the market hasn't yet shaken itself out. We're seeing a lot of new entries into the [electronic] billing space, including many from the traditional telecom environment."

The latest of these is Cabletron Systems, which has unveiled an aggressive e-commerce initiative based on CabletronCommerce, a global electronic business site that enables customers and partners to configure, price and purchase networking equipment over the Internet.

The system simplifies the sales process for customers, allowing them to use Cabletron's database of networking expertise to configure, price and purchase products. The system is expected to decrease returns of misconfigured products and alleviate paperwork.

Initially, the system will be used to manage Cabletron's own customer billing and support functions, but a partnership with GTE soon will lead to a similar e-commerce approach from the carrier, said Don Reed, president and CEO of Cabletron.

This move by Cabletron follows close on the heels of announcements from other traditional telecommunications vendors.

NCR recently unveiled a Web-based solution, SmartEC Billing Plus, which generates Web pages with personalized billing information for individual customers by using carriers' data warehouse systems. In a similar vein, AT&T introduced AT&T One Rate Online, which lets customers order services and view their bills using the Internet for a charge.

"There's a lot of variety and a lot of opportunity to the solutions being offered," said John Little, president of Portal Software, which focuses on Internet-based customer care and billing. "The major issue from us, a company that's developing systems specifically for the on-line environment, is that we don't think there's going to be a single platform for billing for both Internet and telecommunications in the near future."

Although vendors such as Saville Systems seem determined to develop convergent billing platforms that merge bills for a number of services into one, the down-in-the-trenches work is likely to be done by companies specializing in billing for one specific type of service, Little said.

"Other companies, which have come from the telecom side, have been trying to bill for the Internet for the last few years and are starting to realize that you can't just tweak an existing system," said Little. "Several of the larger telecom vendors have actually started talking to us about using the Portal Infranet product as part of a larger strategy-converging billing, but not converging the various components of billing."

"That partnership model is a much more likely model to succeed, at least in the near term," said Taylor. "It's important to remember that service providers and carriers are really learning about this on the fly. Anyone claiming to have an all-in-one solution should still be taken with a grain of salt at this point."

PREMISYS TAPS SWITCHED NETWORK TECHNOLOGIES Premisys has licensed cell and packet switching products from Switched Network Technologies to help develop high-performance, high-capacity broadband ATM and IP multiservice platforms. The technologies include a non-blocking switching core, ATM interfaces and 10/100 Mbyte Ethernet interfaces and advanced management and configuration platforms adaptable to carrier access products.

BAY, STRATUS TO BRIDGE SS7, IP NETWORKS Bay Networks and Stratus Computer have joined to develop an open protocol to act as a gateway between SS7 and IP networks. The companies plan to offer a complete intelligent access solution and design new SS7-aware applications for service providers, conduct interoperability testing with leading voice switch suppliers and deliver service management products for outsourcing and wholesaling.

t Portal Software's Infranet

t Kenan Systems' Arbor Billing Platform

t Saville Systems' Saville CBP

t NCR's SmartEC Billing Plus