INTERSHOP, COBALT TEAM UP TO OFFER LINUX-BASED E-COMMERCE APPLIANCE.

Intershop RaQ Consists Of Cobalt RaQ 3 Server And Intershop Merchant On Linux Red Hat 6.0

Intershop Communications Inc., the San Francisco provider of sell-side electronic commerce software, and Cobalt Networks Inc., a Mountain View developer of server appliances, have announced a joint partnership to offer Intershop RaQ, the first Intershop e-commerce appliance on the Linux operating system.

Out of the box, Intershop RaQ will enable service providers to offer an aggressively priced solution for dedicated e-commerce hosting that eliminates complex configuration tasks and reduces server set-up time to a few minutes. Intershop RaQ consists of Cobalt's RaQ 3 server appliance and Intershop Merchant on Linux Red Hat 6.0.

"Cobalt's strategy is to extend Web hosting by delivering complete turnkey application-specific server appliances that enable service providers to broaden their offerings," says Mark Orr, Cobalt's vice president of business development. "Intershop Merchant combined with Cobalt RaQ server appliances offers small to medium sized businesses the full benefits of a true plug and play e-commerce solution."

"Intershop RaQ takes advantage of the open source design and extensible architecture of Cobalt RaQ server appliances as well as the flexibility and scalability of Intershop Merchant," adds Connie DeWitt, vice president, small and medium business marketing at early user Concentric. "We're delighted that Intershop and Cobalt Networks have joined forces. This is exactly the type of turnkey hosted e-commerce solution small-to- medium sized business customers have been asking for."

Intershop Merchant's four-tiered architecture, page caching, load balancing and professional back office management tools are designed for rapid deployment and scalability to meet all current and future e-commerce needs of small-to-medium sized businesses. The Cobalt RaQ server appliance is a rack mountable server optimized for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and businesses that require flexible, easy-to-manage Internet services and Web hosting solutions.

Pre-configured with the Linux operating system, Apache Web server, Sendmail, and Front Page server extensions, Cobalt RaQ server appliances provide the core web publishing, email, and file transfer services, upon which service providers and developers can build their solutions. ISPs can dedicate individual Cobalt RaQ server appliances to individual clients, providing greater flexibility and control of value-added services such as electronic commerce.

"As a pre-configured and optimized solution for dedicated e-commerce hosting, Intershop RaQ is breaking new ground for ISPs," says Jim Demetros, vice president of sales at Intershop. "This bundle joins Intershop's and Cobalt's leading technologies with the robustness of the Linux operating system to deliver affordable and powerful e-commerce solutions in record time."