E-Commerce Package for ISPs

Nextron Inc. has developed software that will allow ISPs to offer value-added web services such as online catalogs and outsource web design to Nextron.

by Paul Rubens of ASPnews.com [September 4, 2000]

An early proponent of the ASP model, infrastructure software provider Nextron Inc has over five years' experience of delivering hosted websites to small and mid-sized enterprises (SMEs). Its software platform, Integrated Creation and Administration System (ICAS), is aimed at telecommunications companies and directory publishers, ISPs and franchisers. It enables them to become ASPs, offering web site construction and e-commerce facilities to large numbers of customers.

The privately owned, San Jose CA-based company — which is backed by Internet infrastructure incubator Safeguard Scientifics Inc (NYSE:SFE) — embarked on international expansion this year, and has also been on the acquisition trail. In July it announced its purchase of ImpulseSale.com, a privately held, Silicon Valley-based, ASP that will bring location-based mobile applications to the Nextron platform.

ICAS enables Nextron's customers to offer simple web sites to large numbers of their customers, and then sell or rent additional features such as online catalogs and e-commerce capabilities as they become more sophisticated. The e-commerce features were added in a new version released in July — see related article on internet.com's Internet Product Watch, Nextron Phase 4.

More in the future
Extra modules offering other business functions such as customer relationship management (CRM) and human resources (HR) will be made available to customers in the future, senior VP of international Joe Dabaghian told ASPnews.com last month. This will allow them to develop their ASP product from one which offers only web sites into a more fully rounded business offering to customers.

"Adding applications is the future and we are defining those products now. These are only related to web site building in that they are all going to be browser based," said Dabaghian.

Services make the money
Although it aims to enable other companies to become ASPs, Nextron has always hosted ICAS for customers unwilling to run the software themselves, for "a few dollars per end user per month." This is on top of the standard licence fee for the software, plus the one-off or monthly per-user fee.

"What we have learned from our experiences since 1995 is that supplying software alone won't succeed," Dabaghian said.

Nextron also operates a professional services arm that not only installs ICAS for customers — often with custom modifications — but also offers a full web design service. This enables its customers to farm out the work of actually building web sites for their end users back to Nextron. Increasingly, Dabaghian said, customers are interested in running only a sales and marketing operation to sell web sites using ICAS, leaving everything else to Nextron.

ICAS is driven by an Oracle database running on Solaris, which also performs back office functions including interfacing with billing systems, maintaining passwords and usernames, and tracking site information such as site visits and page impressions.

It is important to have these automated features built in, said Dabaghian, because in the mass market the administration of thousands of end users can rapidly become more time consuming than the hosted services themselves. "We believe site creation is a small part of the overall market. It's about huge volumes, not web sites."

—End