Winstar, Excite follow Microsoft with new portal offerings.

A week after Microsoft Corp. announced its intent to field a small-business portal, bCentral.com, Winstar Communications Inc. and Excite@Home have gone live with their own counter-offerings. Winstar_s New Media Company Inc. division launched on Friday the content for its much-anticipated office.com commerce tools and content site. Winstar announced earlier this year that Yahoo!_s small business site planned to offer the office.com content and services. In April, CBS announced it was taking a 33 1/3 percent stake in office.com. Winstar has promised a full-scale launch of office.com would occur in the third quarter of this year. At the 1999 Global Convegence Summit in New York this week, Winstar Communications chairman and CEO Will Rouhanhaur told attendees that broadband services vendor Winstar was interested in playing in the content business in order to help spur demand for more and more bandwidth. On Thursday, Excite@Home went live with its own small-business portal, which it has dubbed Work.com. Like Microsoft_s bCentral, the beta of which Microsoft made live this week, and like office.com, Work.Com is a collection of tips and tools for customers interested in cashing in on the commerce experience. Microsoft_s bCentral, which includes among its offerings Microsoft_s LinkExchange ad services, is part of Microsoft_s revamped MSN service. Traditional portal/search vendors aren_t the only way vendors are targeting small businesses. A growing number of software vendors are offering hosted commerce applications and services, like the zShops capability announced this week by Amazon.com. Others, like HotOffice Technologies Inc., are offering a suite of small-business services like calendaring, email, chat, via deals like the one HotOffice inked in August with Staples.