BT wants to offer its services as a 'trusted broker' for enterprises considering web services projects.

From January, BT will offer a managed Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) or .Net web services deployment environment, starting at £20,000 per month, for companies to test proof-of-concept projects.

The telco said that it has spent £10m in the past 18 months learning and implementing web services. It hopes to attract companies on a managed service basis when they are ready for full-scale implementations.

"Our aim is to make web services a practical reality for companies by bringing together the best in the world," explained Andy Green, chief executive at BT Wholesale.

The firm claims to have 300 staff with experience on web services projects, which Green said was "more than most".

BT's offering includes a Web Services Management Layer tool for security and performance monitoring, available from January, and a Web Services Application Component Library of reusable components from BT and third-party software firms.

Although the telco has used .Net and BEA J2EE platforms for its own projects, it has teamed with Microsoft to be its first strategic web services partner.

But Pierre Danon, chief executive at BT Retail, said that BT's multi-platform approach is "reasonably neutral".

Green explained that all contracts would be negotiated on a case-by-case basis, including service level agreements and the degree to which web services components are guaranteed.

"Our intention is to be the trusted broker within this environment," he said.

BT's web services-based projects include its ADSL broadband availability checker, which took a team of three six weeks to develop.

It currently provides a simple HTML-based front end to third-party internet service providers such as Freeserve, Pipex and BT's own BTopenworld, linking in with authentication and SQL 2000 server databases.

Other in-house applications include real-time support for call centre staff, managing 40 services linking into BT's legacy residential and small business database, which handles £15bn in revenue a year, and a web-based fault and order checking facility.

Danon pointed out that, although BT had made 90 per cent of its supply chain management web-centric, he was disappointed that only seven per cent of its customer services were transacted online.

"I think web services will be the enabler to do better," he told reporters, adding that BT's figures showed that online processing was on average "10 times cheaper" than the current alternative.