KM and e-commerce get sticky

Insight teams with Zivo to develop solutions for intelligent commerce.

By Paul Montgomery

Knowledge management and electronic commerce are two of the hottest trends at the moment, and two developers are teaming to deliver both of them in an integrated solution.

Insight Technologies will combine its knowledge management expertise with the e-commerce experience of Web development firm Zivo, in an alliance supported by Microsoft.

Alex Paris, sales manager for Australia/NZ for Insight, said both companies were in markets the other wanted to attack, with Zivo contributing Web wisdom to Insight's portal development, and Insight helping with Zivo's focus on personalised content delivery.

"It's just content to us."

"We bring to their existing customers a massive value-add in technology, and we bring an opportunity for them to expand into other areas," Mr Paris said.

He added that one possible product of the alliance might be a "shopping agent", which would merge the shopping cart function of most e-commerce sites with the knowledge agent technology which is appearing in KM servers like that of Insight.

"It's just content to us. We support all of the Web's content, just as well as the content stored inside organisations," said Mr Paris.

A road show sponsored by Microsoft featuring Zivo and Insight will run around the country in the first weeks of August, emphasising the fact that both companies are tied strongly to Windows NT.

Insight uses search engine technology from US-based portal developer Autonomy, but Mr Paris said Autonomy's experience was in Unix whereas Insight relies on NT and has added security features into its software.

Mr Paris said Insight was exploring possibilities for further partnerships with vendors in different industries, such as call centre software.

"We can't be expert at everything but we as a company appreciate the depth that our engine brings to our partners," he said.