Home Grown Ripens.

ASPEN, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 29, 1999--

When the curtain goes up at the Net Returns 2000 Conference in Aspen, Colorado today, there will be a coming out for one local eCommerce company. Snowmass Technologies ("SnowTech"), known locally for its eCommerce empowerments for the lodging, event, arts and philanthropic communities, has been facilitating Net Returns for itself and its Aspen and Snowmass Village customers since 1995.

Net Returns 2000 is a forum for a select, by-invitation-only, world renowned group of senior executives who leverage the Internet as a strategic business opportunity, sponsored by The Industry Standard (magazine) and TheStandard.com. It is being held at the St. Regis in Aspen from September 29 through October 2. The conference features an Enabling Technologies Forum where 12 of the world's latest eCommerce technology ventures have been selected on the merit of their high-tech products. Of them, the local contender is SnowTech, who has been invited to showcase its Secure-X Virtual Public Network eCommerce utilities.

SnowTech is known in the industry as an Application Solution Provider (ASP) Network, which simply means that it has created and virtually-serves eCommerce business software applications (utilities) for its customers. SnowTech's robust library of Secure-X applications is a departure from the typical virtual "retail" stores that have dominated the headlines. Secure-X applications are primarily service oriented and run the gamut from lodging, event and activity reservations to event ticketing, curriculum registration and professional services scheduling.

Most of today's eCommerce sites enable one-stop shopping from multiple stores via yet another middleman, "the Mall," reincarnating the very barrier the Internet offers to eliminate. Many companies are forced to duplicate and reconcile their inventories in order to participate in multiple portals or malls. What's unique to SnowTech is that its applications are chameleon-like and personalizable.

Chameleon-like in that a business can automatically submit unique, portal-cloned links (store entrances) to the portals with whom it wishes to participate, while maintaining inventory, pricing and orders centrally, through its single online Secure-X utility. Personalizable in that multiple businesses can selectively "filter" their online offerings with each other in a virtual "package." This provides the customer with a single online invoice of multiple goods and services (like a vacation package for example), while enabling the businesses to process their individual portions of that transaction and enabling them to do so with a single tool across multiple portals.

SnowTech distributes its ASP Network in partnership with the world's Internet Portals who wish to provide an expanded service offering to their members. This partnership enables the end-user business to easily adopt an industry-specific eCommerce configuration with little or no upfront investment. The portal partners usually charge a monthly directory-listing "enhancement" fee and SnowTech earns a small utility-transaction fee per item rented, reserved or purchased. The portal partner is freed up from technical support and network management issues and can concentrate instead on attracting eyeballs.

SnowTech has eCommerce-enabled just about every type of business there is in its backyard of neighboring ski towns Aspen and Snowmass Village, building and bettering its products in its hometown test-bed of choice since 1995; waiting until the Internet revolution invented the label of "Application Solution Provider." According to Nick Nicholson, the company's President: "we just got tired of trying to explain our desired business niche to the venture capital community and decided to focus on producing it instead. Then, one day early this year, one of our customers went public and our utilities were discovered."

The extensive library of pre-built Secure-X eCommerce objects is SnowTech's strategic advantage, enabling it to get a public network or private (corporate, enterprise or industry deployment) to market substantially faster than anyone.