NetObjects expands ‘keep it simple’ philosophy

NetObjects has taken its “keep it simple” Web philosophy to the next step: it will do the work for the service provider. The company this week will unveil a Web application hosted in the NetObjects data center and marketed to customers who want to tap the integrated, bundled e-business solutions market for small business customers.

NetObjects has tailored three programs to help potential customers generate revenues by selling e-powered products and services to their own small business customers. By doing this, NetObjects is able to stand out from others in the Web services space, said Jim Calhoun, vice president of product management and marketing.

“One pretty big differentiator is the ability to install this platform inside a service provider’s infrastructure,” he said. “There’s nobody else that we know of that allows you to [do this].”

The second piece of the puzzle is that it is a managed turnkey service that can be branded by the service provider.

“One instance of our application can host multiple brands, multiple languages and multiple bundles of Web services,” Calhoun continued.

As a third piece, NetObjects allows service providers to resell the service to their larger customers.

Although the product set will be aimed at the U.S. market, its first impact will be felt internationally, Calhoun said.

“We just see a lot of growth overseas,” he said. “A lot of our core competition is very U.S.-based, written in what we would consider first-generation [language], whereas ours is all open and Java-based and can handle multiple languages.”