Open Market Inc., Premenos Corp., and three other vendors have created a software package for doing business over the Internet.
The software, called OM-Transact, creates a system of codes that registered trading partners can use to authenticate Internet transactions. It also lets businesses send and receive documents using imaging or electronic data interchange standards.
Premenos, based in Concord, Calif., specializes in electronic data interchange. Open Market is an Internet specialist.
OM-Transact will help users "exploit the full business potential" of the World Wide Web, said Gary Eichhorn, chief executive of Cambridge, Mass.- based Open Market. Companies need not "cobble together jury-rigged systems at great time and expense; we've already done all the hard work for them," he said.
Several companies have received advanced versions of the software, which Open Market said will become generally available next month.
For example, Banc One Corp. of Columbus, Ohio, uses the software in its positive pay service. Positive pay is a cash management service that delivers images of checks to corporate customers to help identify fraudulent items.
First Union Corp. also is using the software to "commerce-enable our current Web site," said Tom Kitrick, a vice president at the Charlotte, N.C.-based banking company.
"It will provide our customers with a secure environment where they can conduct business on-line," he said.
Other vendors that have contributed to the creation of OM-Transact are Sterling Software Inc., a Dallas-based software developer and value-added network operator; Taxware International Inc., a Salem, Mass.-based sales tax calculation software developer; and Stratus Computer Inc., of Marlboro, Mass.
A second software package from Open Market, OM-Axcess, manages the distribution of proprietary bank information over the Web.
OM-Transact's licensing fees start at $250,000. OM-Axcess' base price is $35,000.
