Companies offer customers joint sales and marketing efforts

Commerce One, and Intershop Communications today announced an agreement to expand the scope of their global strategic alliance to connect suppliers to e-marketplaces. The alliance is intended to allow Global 2000 suppliers to utilize Intershop-based solutions to fully leverage Commerce One MarketSite.net, the U.S. e-marketplace for exchanging goods and services among businesses worldwide, as a strategic Internet selling channel.

This agreement is a preliminary, non-binding memorandum of understanding.

Definitive agreements are expected to be executed in the fourth quarter of 2000.

As part of the agreement, Commerce One and Intershop will jointly promote and market e-commerce solutions in addition to aligning, educating and compensating their global sales forces to offer complementary solutions. Commerce One will also include Intershop as part of its supplier adoption efforts, which are aimed at increasing supplier participation in Commerce One-sponsored and industry-specific e-marketplaces. Furthermore, Intershop will recommend Commerce One products and services to its customers interested in procurement and enabling trading networks.

"Commerce One and Intershop are enabling open access to worldwide markets, allowing trading partners to buy and sell goods and services on a global basis," said Mark Hoffman, chairman and CEO of Commerce One. "We believe that together Commerce One and Intershop can play a significant role in driving transactions across the Global Trading Web."

"Increasingly, our customers are telling us that they want a simple e-commerce business model, that will Sell Anywhere - on their own sites as well as onto e-marketplaces," said Stephan Schambach, CEO of Intershop. "Now, through our expanded alliance with Commerce One, suppliers from all industries will be able to sell onto these e-marketplaces. Customers will benefit from robust solutions and leverage Intershop as a multi-channel Internet selling engine via Intershop enfinity, our flagship B2B e-commerce solution."