Internetweek, March 16, 1999

IBM Debuts Catalog Tool

By Richard Karpinski

In March of 1999, IBM unveiled a new tool named Catalog Architect. The Catalog Architect will assist e-commerce merchants and suppliers, as well as business-to-business environments to create and manage on-line catalogs. The new catalog tool understands catalog elements and their relationships, helping e-commerce businesses to create an object oriented product database. Catalog Architect features a spreadsheet-like interface, and requires no database management tools. Multiple users or departments, working together on the tool to create one catalog can access the tool. Catalog Architect runs on Windows NT and works with DB2 and Net.Commerce 3.1.2 on AIX, Windows NT and Solaris.

The Catalog Architect will allow e-commerce businesses to become more efficient by creating more efficient catalogs that are easier to maintain. On-line catalogs are currently, inefficient and costly. Managing today’s e-commerce sites demand up to 75 percent of the company’s resources. This large amount of resources is used managing product information such as pricing, model numbers, size, color, etc. For these reasons accompanied by the lack of appropriate tools users tend to build simple catalogs with fewer attributes. Building catalogs with fewer attributes causes problems when the sites want to personalize. Personalization of the sites requires in-depth customer profiles with highly detailed product information. For now, the Catalog Architect, will only position catalog data to IBM’s Net.Commerce server, but will support non-IBM servers and data formats, including XML-based formats. The suggested price is $3000, which includes a single license in Net.Commerce Pro Edition at no extra charge.

The industry of electronic commerce is rapidly growing. It is projected that e-commerce will have a global market share of 4-5% by the end of the year 2000. This new tool will allow merchants and suppliers to better meet their customer’s needs and give them a more efficient and extensive look at products and services available over the World Wide Web. IBM’s Catalog Architect will definitely change the industry of e-commerce. Retailers will be able to provide on-line catalogs with more up to date information and in more detail. The businesses who use the Internet as their gateway to the consumer will benefit from a savings in maintenance costs which will in turn lower the costs charged to customers. This new tool has set a trend that I am sure will be followed by many other technology companies.

Miriam Dorisca

ISM 5206

March 22, 1999