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Netscape%squots New Strategy

As the browser market stabilizes, Netscape looks to Netcenter Web site and enterprise software.

By James Niccolai, PCWorld   

Netscape will draw on the full range of its products and services to allow businesses to buy, build, or outsource products and services they need to do business on the Web, company executives said at a meeting with press and analysts here today.

%dquotThe enterprise service business and the portal business are coming together to create a new, as yet undefined, opportunity to sell products and services,%dquot said Jim Barksdale, Netscape%squots president and chief executive officer. %dquotOur advantage is that we are in both of those businesses,%dquot Barksdale said.

Netscape is uniquely positioned to meet those businesses%squot needs because it offers the enterprise software that large companies can use to build e-commerce systems, as well as a popular Netcenter Web site that Barksdale said will provide small and medium-size companies with a doorway to a vast electronic distribution network.

Barksdale said Netscape will sell enterprise software directly only to large corporations with revenues of more than $750,000; but it will sell its software to small and medium-size businesses via third parties, including Internet service providers, telecommunications companies, and systems integrators.

The Mountain View, California-based company will emphasize its corporate success stories to help reposition itself as a provider of the complex software that companies need to do business on the Internet, rather than as merely a browser company, Barksdale said. He announced that the Ford Motor Company is using its Directory Server to allocate resources and access for users of its supplier network.

E-Commerce on the Way

Netscape will offer e-commerce services through Netcenter, which the company has been jazzing up over the last month with new features such as free e-mail and personalized content services. Businesses will be able to outsource their electronic commerce activities through Netcenter, saving them from building their own e-commerce sites, Barksdale said.

It was not immediately clear who would manage those outsourced services to customers who do business through Netcenter.

To drive traffic to the site, Netscape will offer customizable features that can best be accessed using its Navigator browser, which has lost market share to Microsoft%squots Internet Explorer browser over the past year. But Barksdale said Netscape%squots share of the browser market has stabilized.

At the meeting Netscape also announced two beta additions to its CommerceXpert software line, as well as partnerships with Sun Microsystems and Bay Networks that Netscape said will simplify the administration of a company%squots online activities.

Bay Networks has licensed its Directory Server software, which will allow Bay to build products that integrate directory features with the switches that direct traffic on local and wide area networks. Such directory features allow a company to control access to a corporate networks based on who users are, what applications they can use, and how much bandwidth is allocated to them, Netscape said.

Bundling Netscape%squots software with Bay%squots switches will allow network administrators to make a change to a directory once, then have it pushed out automatically to all the switching devices around a network rather than configuring each switch separately, Netscape said.