In a move to help online businesses build their bottom line, Prodigy Communications Corp. Tuesday
released a set of new services to meet small business e-commerce needs.
Prodigy Business Solution’s
collection of Internet access options, business and intranet tools and Web
design or hosting services are built to make online business start-ups easy.
Jim Dougherty, Prodigy Business Solutions executive vice president and
general manager, said small businesses need a
single, easy-to-use resource to build their e-commerce initiatives.
“Businesses need a one-stop shop to get online, rather than wading
through a baffling array of product choices from different providers.”
Doughtery said Prodigy is leveraging their national brand name to introduce
a comprehensive scope of products and services and capture a piece of the
small business e-commerce market that is expected to increase 10-fold over
the next three years.
“The market is ripe for explosive growth,” he said, and Forrester Research Inc. concurs.
According to the independent research firm, small business Web hosting
services produced over $487 million in 1998. Forrester forecasts predict
that the same market will top $4.8 billion by the year 2002
Competition to provide e-commerce solutions for small businesses makes for
interesting deals. Partnerships with Orbit Commerce Inc. and Digital Instincts, Inc. helped
Prodigy to develop their ecommerce services.
Big-business features like real-time sales reporting and secure Internet
transactions are readily designed into small business e-commerce with the
help of Prodigy’s partners.
In order to meet increasing demands for bandwidth, Prodigy intends to roll out Digital Subscriber Line access later this summer.
