AS AN ASP (application service provider), North Systems is trying to become an e-commerce hub for an array of business-to-business applications. In an interview with InfoWorld Editor in Chief Michael Vizard, company CTO Yuri Zhovnirovsky explains why the nature of b-to-b e-commerce requires companies to rely on ASPs to drive business models in the digital economy.

InfoWorld: What exactly does North Systems do?

Zhovnirovsky: North Systems automates the various channels to the midmarket manufacture house, the first being the most traditional one, which is the indirect channel where we try and help customers automate that process. The next one is managing the storefronts, where we just set up the site and your online store and then hook up into your inventory systems. The third one is the Net market, where we help people plug into an Ariba, Commerce One, or whatever network. And then the last one is e-procurement. We offer all that using an application service provider model.

InfoWorld: How do you approach working with companies that have existing infrastructures?

Zhovnirovsky: There are two pieces to that. One part of that is product design. I think for any product to play in today's e-market world, you've got to be able to play in the enterprise. On top of that, we take our tools and customize them to go against different systems. But if we were to come in and do sort of like an Andersen Consulting engagement for every customer, it would never scale. So there's a definite product component.

InfoWorld: Upon what technologies is your service based?

Zhovnirovsky: The core is Java. It's a 100 percent Java-based application. But beyond that, there are things like application servers that I believe are commodities at this point. There's no point to go reinvent that. We are based on top of BEA's application server. On top of that, we add our own applications.

InfoWorld: Isn't trying to do provide this service across multiple industries a rather complex undertaking?

Zhovnirovsky: I think a couple of things will happen. I think things are going to start standardizing more. We're seeing that happen now. XML is the next big push to get that together, which will make our problem a little easier to solve. Around that, we're also going to build expertise around the various vertical industries, so we're going to understand the component manufacturer, we're going to understand the memory manufacturer, and so on. And then beyond that, we've partnered with webMethods for the various legacy technologies that we need to integrate with in order to hook everybody together.

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