News
IBM and Portal Team on ASP Billing Initiative
IBM and Portal Software Inc. announced an agreement to offer software developer assistance with IP Billing and User Management Services, two necessary components for server-based hosting in ASP data centers.
Portal's Infranet platform and training will be offered to qualified software developers within IBM's ASP Prime, a program for helping software developers ready their applications for Web hosting. This initiative will establish Portal as the first customer management and billing platform within IBM's ASP Prime Solution Center facilities. Through this relationship, the Centers will now be able to educate developers how to extend their hosted application with Infranet customer management and billing services.
This agreement also provides an important framework for allowing both companies to work together towards a common industry interface definition for billing instrumentation and user provisioning in a hosted application environment.
Portal Infranet software platform is a realtime, highly scalable solution for the effective management of Internet services and emerging ASPs. Infranet allows service providers to capitalize on exploding Internet business markets with out-of-the-box functionality, open architecture, built-in flexibility and seamless integration with other systems. Infranet supports the creation and management of customer accounts; development, pricing and provisioning of service offerings; and customer activity tracking, rating, and billing.
IBM's ASP Prime Solution Centers provide technical and marketing assistance for qualified developers who want to extend their IBM UNIX, Windows NT and AS/400 applications into the ASP hosting environment. Through ASP Prime and IBM's Hosting Advantage initiative, a qualified ASP hosting provider will be recommended to developers who successfully complete their application testing and enablement within any of the centers. ASP Prime Solution Centers are currently located in Beaverton, Ore., and Rochester, Minn. Waltham, Mass.; Hursley, England; Sydney, Australia; San Mateo, Calif.; Paris, France; Tokyo, Japan; and Stuttgart, Germany.
For more information, visit www.ibm.com/solutions/netgeneration, or www.portal.com.