HP chooses ISIS for e-services

Hewlett-Packard has signed an alliance with Australian Internet company ISIS Communications to provide content and other work to build on HP's "e-services" vision.

The first three effects of the alliance will be: ISIS will be added to the list of "preferred solutions partners" for HP e-services; it will sell and implement the eponymous e-commerce and knowledge management software suite from BroadVision, and ISIS and HP will co-develop applications for the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP).

"The strategic partnership with ISIS clearly demonstrates that companies are prepared to embrace the future of the Internet by providing Chapter 2 e-services solutions to the Australian market, which fits within HP's e-services vision," said Norry McAllister, GM of enterprise computing for HP Australia.

ISIS will use BroadVision's software to "manage its own communities", according to the company. BroadVision is also represented in Australia by Sausage Software and Xpedior, among others.

ISIS also has an online division for which the company boasts competencies in Web design, stream media, advertising, WAP services and customer relationship management software.

"The alliance with HP, in tandem with our Online business, underpins our strategy to offer content-rich, fully-managed Web solutions for businesses that go way beyond simple fee-for-service Web development," said Adam Radly, CEO of ISIS.

Hewlett-Packard's vision of e-services is a network of modularised software applications which manage all aspects of the workflow processes that businesses have to address as they move to electronic service delivery. A core technology at the heart of e-services is e-speak, a middleware language which allows disparate applications to communicate with each other about events and processes.

The ISIS deal is the latest in a series of announcements HP have made to add mobile services to e-services. Late last year, the company also flagged its intentions to bundle WAP servers with HP servers running e-speak (see Image & Data Manager, November/December 1999, page 2).

ISIS floated on the Australian Stock Exchange in 1999 and is now worth over $200 million. Its stock gained 10 cents to $1.60 on the day of the deal.