Union City, Calif.-based NetPace continues to develop a suite of wireless m-commerce applications, aiming to preview its yet-unnamed flagship wireless application platform next month.
“We feel we’re in a position to go out and preview our products and services,” said Cedric Fernendes, NetPace project manager. “We’re letting people know the areas we’re working on.”
NetPace formed in 1996 as an e-commerce company-providing consulting, system integration and applications to the Internet world for both business-to-business and business-to-consumer models.
Like many Internet-centric firms today, NetPace’s head turned toward the wireless space about eight months ago, and the company has spent time since then trying to figure out how to play in the new game.
“We have seen wireless become a natural extension of what we’re doing in the e-commerce area,” Fernendes said. “It seemed logical to enter the market where there was a paradigm shift into m-commerce.”
The company has been developing a wireless application framework to enable m-commerce services with plans to license this framework to clients looking to extend their Web-based applications in-house, as well as offer it on a wireless application service provider model for those wishing to outsource it.
The company expects to demonstrate the platform at the ICE conference next month in San Jose, Calif. The platform, Fernendes said, will support any type of wirelessly enabled device via any wireless network-a standard feature of wireless ASP platforms. In a bid to set itself apart from the many other wireless enablers and wireless ASPs, NetPace has developed several value-added applications that sit on top of this platform, which clients could choose to implement in the absence of their own.
They include the Wireless Apartment Guide, Auction Framework, Product Catalog, Onido Address Book/Personal Organizer, M-bank, Global Trading Forum, Expense Management Service and One View, a unified messaging service. Most applications are focused on the m-commerce marketplace.
“We can add these to our customers’ current services, or just act as facilitators for their applications,” Fernendes explained.
Already, the company has existing partnerships with Redirect-Mail.com, to integrate its wireless solution suite with RedirectMail’s services. It also has a partnership with Pumatech Inc., under which NetPace acts as a systems integrator, helping Pumatech implement its wireless solutions for customers.
