AN E-EXPLOSION, IBM targets ISPs with enhanced e-care and e-commerce solutions

IBM is using the lessons it learned from its shuttered on-line mall in a wide-ranging campaign to provide enhanced business and communications solutions to Internet service providers.

The company removed its World Avenue mall from the market earlier this month but will offer the Net.Commerce software solution it embodied as one element in its ISP strategy. IBM closed the mall after deciding that it would have been better served if the retailers were responsible for promotions, a spokesman said.

Net.Commerce lets users choose items from a graphic, interactive catalog and uses secure payment technology to monitor purchases and ensure their protection. IBM has incorporated Net.Commerce into its Commerce Solutions, an offering that lets carriers, catalog companies and Web-based businesses host storefronts. The solution has captured the attention of major players, including L.L. Bean, the first catalog retailer to showcase its outdoor recreational wear and equipment with the system. The next release will support the secure electronic commerce standard.

"We're moving to deliver software to ISPs so they can deliver that solution to their customers," said Gary Cohen, vice president of marketing for IBM's Internet division. "The ISP can configure [Net.Commerce] for whatever its customer wants.

IBM also is touting its ability to provide hardware and services as a more comprehensive package than that offered by competitors such as Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems.

Hand-in-hand with such high-end services is "e-care," the buzzword for on-line customer care. Enter EchoMail, from Millennium Cybernetics Inc., an application that automatically reads, sorts, classifies, routes, responds, tracks and measures in-bound e-mail at ISP Web sites. Depending on the request, EchoMail can either respond with an appropriate answer or send the e-mail to a subject matter expert for greater detail. The system tracks relevancy so businesses can do target marketing, said Marni Ehrlich, solutions executive with IBM's network computing, telecommunications and media industry.

For ISPs, businesses and consumers flooded with e-mail, IBM offers a messaging solution that relies on the company's strengths - complete redundancy, vertical and horizontal scalability, integration with X.500 directories and support for hundreds of thousands of mailboxes per server.

Demand for e-mail solutions will explode, with e-mail expected to surpass voice calls by 2005. By 1998, people will pay bills, update insurance policies, make dinner reservations and fill prescriptions with electronic messages, according to a recent report by Forrester Research, Cambridge, Mass.

IBM also is leveraging its experience with major events - from Wimbledon and the Masters to the 1996 Olympic Games and the Deep Blue chess match - to face the Internet future.

IBM is in trials with two customers on a collaborative solution that will let ISPs host customer intranets and use new applications like Instant!teamroom. The teamroom lets users set up a team, share files, create and store documents and track the team's progress.

In the fourth quarter, IBM plans to introduce infrastructure and security solutions and a highly scalable Web-hosting platform using Lotus Go! Webserver, IBM Interactive Network Dispatcher and Distributed File System (see story on page 8). The content solution will let ISPs transform their Yellow Pages directories into on-line multimedia databases and offer streaming audio and video.

Shira Levine contributed to this report.