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USWeb/CKS offers managed e-commerce services

USWeb/CKS announces availability of new services for companies that want to farm out their e-commerce operations.

Kim Girard
Kim Girard has written about business and technology for more than a decade, as an editor at CNET News.com, senior writer at Business 2.0 magazine and online writer at Red Herring. As a freelancer, she's written for publications including Fast Company, CIO and Berkeley's Haas School of Business. She also assisted Business Week's Peter Burrows with his 2003 book Backfire, which covered the travails of controversial Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. An avid cook, she's blogged about the joy of cheap wine and thinks about food most days in ways some find obsessive.
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Kim Girard
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USWeb/CKS today announced availability of new services for companies that want to farm out their e-commerce operations.

Through the new offering, called Internet Application Manager for e-Commerce or iAMcommerce, corporations may pay a flat monthly subscription charge to Internet services company USWeb/CKS, which will set up, host and manage their Internet applications.

San Francisco-based USWeb/CKS--along with a host of other firms--is marketing managed services as a way for companies to avoid investing in the start-up costs associated with building and managing systems themselves.

USWeb/CKS expects to charge customers, on average, between $25,000 to $75,000 per month, depending on factors such as level of service required, the size of the company and the number of dedicated processors needed to support their e-commerce business, said Brian Winter, a vice president of service development for USWeb/CKS. Initial customization costs are extra and are calculated per project.

Through the deal, USWeb/CKS will manage content for clients, provide personalized sales capabilities, process orders and manage customer accounts. The company has standardized on Microsoft's platform, a deal announced in September when Microsoft invested $67.5 million in the company.

In its data centers, where USWeb/CKS will host applications, the company is using an Extensible Markup Language (XML)-based standard platform using Microsoft's software and OneSoft's e-commerce applications, called OneCommerce. In separate news, USWeb/CKS today announced a licensing agreement with OneSoft.

Winter said customers' monthly fees should be reduced after they're up and running and initial customization is done. The monthly subscription fee charged includes the OneCommerce application and upgrades, hardware, maintenance and support, and applications hosting and management. Fees are determined by traffic volume and the processing power required to manage that traffic, the company said. The fees charged ensure a 99.5 percent uptime guarantee, Winter said.