TNE Online Interview: Ivan Zasarsky

EC-Gate has been offering business-to-business applications on wired and wireless devices in Europe. The company will be offering its B-to-B wireless services to U.S. business customers, and resale to service providers, within the next quarter. Ivan Zasarsky recently spoke told us about the company's wireless offerings.

Q: I know you are an ASP, and have wireless offerings, so what is your acronym of the day?

A: Actually, we just received an award for best wireless application in Europe. We have been a WASP, but are not a pure WASP play, but we have had wireless offerings in place since April 11 of last year.

Q: Can you give me a real-life example of a vertical market you helped and describe their system before EC-Gate and after EC-Gate?

A: Construction is a good example. Before EC-Gate, in the European community there had been lots of attempts in the marketplace at trading between partners. They went through the normal approaches of standards in EDI documents, and tried to come up with an industry consensus for adopting ideas, like how to catalog materials. This didn't work. Enter us. We were asked to provide an enabling feature set. The community said, we need to inter-operate our systems. We want structured messaging, like IM. We need a transaction platform. We created EU standards. We created identification for discreet products, like an e-UPC code. We were able to get a high quality of information so that when you got a quote on steel, you were sure that the item was legal, binding.

Q: So you are developing secure Web site communities for businesses to do commerce, and you will take that access to the wireless devices.

A: Yes, it's a portal environment. On the public Web site, then there's trading environment data warehouse. There's a single point of reference. The other part of this system is that I can have a private marketplace [on the site] to trade just between one or two manufacturers.

Q: What are the challenges to bringing such a system, accessible via wireless devices, to the United States?

A: In the U.S., there are bald spots in wireless coverage. We are working with Ericsson to understand how an application that is wired and wireless acts on the different topologies. The U.S. basically has two different services — CDMA and TDMA. That's not consistent with data transport. We are constructing VPN transatlantic using wireless in Europe and send inform

Q: WASP is an acronym that emerged a year and a half ago. What does this sector have to do to survive?

A: It's not just about providing applications. Most WASPs are only the platform. We offer applications that also have the ability to utilize the mobile Internet. Anyone offering wireless [applications] has to take into consideration the immaturity of the network and the high expectations of the users. It has to work all the time and be as reliable as the phone.

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in The Net Economy.