New iPlanet Market Maker Platform Allows Rapid Deployment Of Next Generation Open Digital Marketplaces.

iPlanet™ E-Commerce Solutions, a Sun-Netscape Alliance, announced the iPlanet Market Maker platform, the cornerstone of its solution for Open Digital Marketplaces. This platform will help enable leading enterprises, service providers and dot com startups to create and operate the next generation of digital marketplaces - Open Digital Marketplaces with scalability, reliability and the integration required by business to business (B2B) services. In addition to enabling multiple buyers and sellers to come together to conduct commerce, collaborate within the community and access content, the iPlanet Market Maker platform for Open Digital Marketplaces will provide the business model flexibility necessary for market makers to be successful in their respective markets. "As more and more digital marketplaces are established, there is an acute need for a reliable and scalable platform that provides market makers with the necessary business to business components to rapidly create Open Digital Marketplaces. This platform must be easily extensible and customizable to meet the specific requirements of each market being addressed," said Mark Tolliver, president and general manager of iPlanet E-Commerce Solutions. "iPlanet Market Maker provides market makers with a software platform that leverages open standards, and provide the services they need to rapidly achieve the full benefits and advantages of Open Digital Marketplaces." Additionally, market makers need to have a choice of transaction types from static pricing to dynamic pricing and the ability to choose or combine these as desired to better meet the needs of their market. To take advantage of the potential of Open Digital Marketplaces, a platform should allow customers to build, run or participate seamlessly in one or many interconnected digital marketplaces. The new eProcurement venture, recently announced by Andersen Consulting and powered by technologies from Sun and iPlanet, will work with Open Digital Marketplaces, among other solutions from iPlanet.