Qwest Communications International yesterday announced Q.Commerce Retail, the first of several electronic commerce offerings the service provider will introduce over the next three quarters.
Q.Commerce Retail is a 24x7 fully managed Web-hosting/e-commerce service based on Microsoft's Site Server Commerce Edition software. In fact, all of Qwest's planned e-commerce services will be based on Microsoft's software products. This means Qwest will not be offering Unix-based commerce services for some time.
Why would Qwest choose a single vendor for e-commerce? Well, Microsoft's investment in Qwest says that's the right thing to do.
"We have a $200 million obligation to release a portfolio of products that ride on (Microsoft's) technology," says Doug Mow, vice president of product management for application services at Qwest. "At some point, we will have to address the other side of the market."
Qwest's Q.Commerce Retail service is a business-to-consumer e-commerce service. The initial setup fee costs approximately $150,000. It includes a Compaq ProLiant NT server, Microsoft's e-commerce software, up to 10M bit/sec worth of dedicated bandwidth, TanData management software, Taxware software, which provides local tax tables, and CyberCash to clear all transactions.
Q.Commerce customers essentially own all of this hardware and software. Qwest also provides consulting and design services to help customers set up Web sites to sell merchandise, Mow says. Qwest will charge Q.Commerce customers a service fee of about $10,000 per month.
The service is available now primarily over Qwest's Internet Solution's network, which was formerly known as Icon before Qwest acquired the ISP last year. The service is also available on some portions of Qwest's network and will be brought up online as the service provider's network buildout continues, Mow says.
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