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By Sarah Left, 16 May 2000 18:28

NEWS iPlanet - the Sun/Netscape Alliance - has launched a business-to-business (B2B) online marketplace product that the company hopes will sink the transaction-fee-based offerings of the two online marketplace giants - Ariba and Commerce One. Stuart Wells, the company's senior VP for ecommerce, said at the launch in Boston that Market Maker will succeed because it operates on open standards and because iPlanet will not take a stake in customers' marketplaces as Ariba and Commerce One have done. "This is a product approach, as opposed to saying we will close the system down and take transaction fees," said Wells. "I don't think that business model will last. I don't think customers want to give up transaction fees." It's a view that's finding a sympathetic welcome at GroundZero, a B2B networking event in Boston run by Net Market Maker. Conference attendee James Craig is the senior ebusiness manager with Canadian telco firm Aliant, and his company is involved in an Ariba-run marketplace. He sees a future for a non-transaction fee approach. "Smaller businesses don't mind paying transaction fees, they see it as operational cost. But larger companies don't want to pay per transaction," Craig said. "The ones who are participating have almost been forced into Ariba. It's like what EDI was; it's a big stick approach." Jupiter Communications analyst, Tim Clark, said iPlanet is late into the market - possibly too late. But he agrees with Wells' view on transaction fees. "The conventional wisdom at this show is that transaction fees will go down and down," Clark said. "Commerce One and Ariba are trying to get a slice of an ever-decreasing pie. At the moment they can force that to happen because they have an application that people need. But no one wants to give up a piece of the transactions." Market Maker 1.0 will be available on Solaris from September, with versions for AIX, HP-UX, Linux and NT following.