Elevating the platform Portal's new system takes on four new customers

A comprehensive platform to deliver expanded services to Internet customers will allow four major international Internet service providers to construct multiservice offerings.

The platform, Infranet from the Portal Information Network, will be used by U.S ISPs CompuServe and Citizens Telecom, Australian ISP OzEmail, and France's Grolier Club-Internet to provide management and delivery functions for their entire Internet services, the company announced last week.

Portal also announced that it has signed CAP Gemini Group, Europe's largest systems integrator, as a distribution and support channel partner, and that it is currently deploying Sprint's Internet Passport service based on the platform.

"These [deals with international ISPs] represent a major endorsement for the Infranet platform," said Cindy Larson, vice president of marketing for the Cupertino, Calif.-based Portal. "It's very clear how versatile and complete the platform is as an off-the-shelf solution.

CompuServe will use the platform to support billing, account tracking and monitoring of core business operations for its business-to-business and consumer services. OzEmail plans to employ the platform as the management and billing system for suites of Internet services that include Web hosting, global roaming access to the Internet, electronic commerce and on-line computer gaming.

Citizens Telecom will use the platform to deliver community-specific services to its audiences, which primarily are smaller communities. Grolier will deliver a broad range of French-language content to customers using the platform for management, billing and customer support.

The platform, a software system that permits ISPs to manage the entire on-line subscriber lifecycle for multiple business and home Internet services, is gaining acceptance as ISPs realize that they can do better with business models other than today's low-margin, fixed-fee model, Larson said.

"These agreements reflect an ongoing expansion by top ISPs from commodity access-only service to differentiated multiservice offerings," said Larson. "A one-size-fits-all approach to billing and managing these services doesn't make sense, but managing them each separately with a specific management system for each service-as has been the case in the past-doesn't allow the service provider to expand services quickly and economically."

By using eight integrated software engines for specific delivery, billing and management components, the platform gives ISPs the ability to manage multiple services quickly and automatically. The system also includes a set of object application programming interfaces that allow ISPs to integrate their own custom billing and management systems into the platform.

While other vendors have tried to solve ISP issues on a case-by-case basis, the unified approach Portal has taken provides a scalable and adaptable tool for dealing with the somewhat uncertain future of Internet commerce, one analyst said.

"[Portal is] the only company that's put together a platform instead of an e-commerce server," said Jerry Michalski, editor of the New York-based e-commerce newsletter Release 1.0. "If anything's going to slow them down, it's because some larger companies may still be clinging to the idea that they can build these systems on their own.

Aiding in that effort will be Portal's alliance with Microsoft to run the platform on the Microsoft Commercial Internet System, formerly known as "Normandy.

"It's a good fit between the two," said Michael Goulde, an analyst with the Boston-based Patricia Seybold Group. "Normandy is the front office, Infranet provides the back office, and obviously you need both. If Microsoft can sign people up, then Portal can set up the billing and management of those customers. They're in a very complementary situation."

Vendors partner for TMN ISR Global Telecom, of Orlando, and DSET, of Bridgewater, N.J., are the two latest companies to tie up in a marketing partnership revolving around the Telecommunications Management Network framework. ISR will co-market its Orbit TMN Manager with DSET's Distributed System Generator object computing platform as an integrated product strategy, and DSET will do the same.

LNP to the STP Tekelec, of Morrisville, N.C., and DSET announced that they will jointly enhance the local number portability functionality on Tekelec's signal transfer point. DSET will contribute software-enabling tools to give Tekelec's Eagle STP the number portablility functions. The two companies also will co-develop a local service management system for the application.