Ecommerce firms gather speed

The ecommerce sector received two boosts this week as Siemens chose IBM as its ebusiness technology provider, and Ariba and Vignette agreed to combine their respective tools.

Siemens plans to use IBM's WebSphere Commerce Suite, WebSphere Application Server and MQSeries servers to build its ebusiness infrastructure.

The German networking and electronics giant will initially invest around one billion euros into the project, which is expected to take about three years to complete.

According to Siemens, WebSphere will allow it to web-enable its existing systems and integrate them with new ebusiness applications. IBM's products support online catalogues and content management, plus offer advanced search facilities.

For the project, Siemens is establishing several company-wide ebusiness applications developed through an alliance with software makers i2 Technologies and CommerceOne. Siemens said it expects to bring its 447,000 employees, customers and suppliers online.

Meanwhile business-to-business (B2B) ecommerce platform and network services provider, Ariba said it would team up with ebusiness software maker Vignette to integrate their products.

Vignette's content management, personalisation and software integration products will be part of Ariba's B2B Commerce Platform.

One customer that has been using the combined software is metal industry portal MetalSpectrum. Bill Murphy, MetalSpectrum chief executive, claimed that Vignette's content and personalisation features, combined with Ariba's ecommerce foundation, "have kept users coming back".