To help meet the worldwide demand of mid-size businesses for hosted e-procurement solutions, IBM Monday (March 19) announced the IBM e-marketplace hosting Service for Ariba Buyer. The company will offer the Ariba Buyer e-procurement solution worldwide in the second quarter of 2001 on a fully managed basis.

Ariba Buyer allows businesses to automate and manage corporate sourcing, buying and internal business processes from employee desktops to preferred suppliers and e-marketplaces.

The IBM-managed Ariba Buyer service will deliver full Ariba Buyer application function, IBM help-desk support and application hosting. Customers will choose from a set of secure hosting options that meet their specific e-procurement needs.

We've hit on an unbeatable combination," said Jim Gant, vice president of e-business Hosting, IBM Global Services. "We have seen strong worldwide demand for e-procurement hosting at our 37 worldwide e-business hosting centers. Together with Ariba, we can now deliver the simplicity of fully managed service, the reliability of IBM e-business hosting, as well as the associated cost and resource savings of Ariba Buyer."

IBM, Ariba's preferred global hosting partner, currently offers secure hosting environments to Ariba Buyer customers worldwide. Through IBM e-marketplace hosting services, mid-size companies will benefit from the Ariba Buyer service at a low start-up cost and a transaction-based monthly hosting fee. IBM customers will be able to choose from a set of solution packages, starting at under $20,000 a month.

"Ariba and IBM are bringing mid-sized companies all the benefits of B2B eCommerce in a fast, secure, scalable and hosted model to help them compete in global eCommerce," said, Dan Fishback, vice president, Global Channels, Ariba. "This latest offering exemplifies the mission of the Ariba and IBM relationship – to combine our world-class products and services to deliver rapid ROI, increase competitive advantage and lower procurement process costs for our customers."

The Ariba Buyer service builds on the partnership formed between IBM and Ariba in March 2000 to offer customers e-marketplace solutions.

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