Kurant's StoreSense 4.0

New partnership program for ISPs allows even the smallest of ISPs to offer Kurant's product to their clients.

by Alex Goldman
Associate Editor, ISP-Planet
[October 18, 2000]

On Monday, Kurant announced the latest update to its StoreSense turnkey e-commerce solution.

An earlier release of StoreSense won Best of Show at the Spring 1999 Internet World.

Flexibile Java LAMPs
"We want it to be affordable for the ISPs," said Sheryl Hawk, VP of Sales and Business Development. The program allows ISPs to move from shared hosting to dedicated hosting, one box per merchant. It also allows ISPs to migrate to freeware LAMP products (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP).

Starting with a single Cobalt RaQ4 (a flash intro to the RaQ4 is available here) — the first StoreSense-enabled RaQ is provided free to those join the program — Kurant claims StoreSense's pricing model allows ISPs to generate more revenue from current customers, from, say, $24.95 per month to as high as $900+ per month per customer.

Written in Java, StoreSense 4.0 is platform agnostic and database agnostic.

Other features
Other new features include:

• Mall functionality: an ISP can set up an online mall, and clients can join, in a particular category. Presumably, a local ISP could offer its residential subscribers discounts to mall items, if its business subscribers agreed.
• Shoppers need only register once — they will then be remembered by the system (perhaps Amazon should have done this one).
• Clustering and load balancing: the backend facilitates traffic flow.
• Web-based setup and administration: It's all done online. Merchants can buy, build, and upgrade a site online. Web-based admin tools lower the cost of administration.
• Marketing materials: Kurant provides standard marketing materials describing basic issues such as what opportunities exist online.

International features
StoreSense is now ready for the rest of the world.

It can make Value-Added Tax (VAT) calculations (for more information on VAT, see this Electronic Commerce Tutorial). Some storefronts just ask a purchaser to state their location, which is simply an invitation to abuse. A robust VAT system can trace the national origin of a purchase.

StoreSense can also handle various payment gateways, including WorldPay, popular in Europe.

Part of adapting a store to Europe and Japan involves adapting the web page to WAP (for Europe) and i-mode (for Japan). A variety of template sets for these and other mobile commerce standards (such as Palm) are available.

ISP Advantage
Kurant's partnership program for ISPs is called ISP Advantage™. Because Kurant provides the first Cobalt RaQ4, the service is, as advertised, available at no up-front cost.

Kurant sees an opportunity in connecting thousands of small ISPs to millions of small businesses around the world.

Kurant will charge subscription fees.

The software itself is divided into modules, each of which provides an additional level of functionality — more revenue to both ISP and to Kurant.

StoreSense even has an offering for those merchants who do not wish to use e-commerce yet. Called "StoreSense Site Edition," the solution helps merchants build websites online, with an unlimited number of web pages, but those sites do not process actual transactions.

Bottom line
At press time, we know of no other program with no up-front cost.

—End