Netmosphere's ActionPlan program, for instance, helps dispersed software development teams better coordinate their activities across an intranet. Chatham is seeing start-ups deliver prepackaged solutions for a number of industries. Helping financial firms use the 'net to research reports about fixed income investments, for instance, is a company called PFN, Inc. in Boston and New York. Its software oversees the movement of reports from a shared, central server to each client's server, making sure the latest information is always available. InStream Corp. in Burlington, Mass., is addressing the mental health care market with a type of workflow software product that coordinates the movement of documents and other information between managed health-care providers and professionals in their offices.
More generic schemes are in the works, too.
Among other functions, their setups will let a supplier of office supplies, for instance, create for each of its customers a tailored catalog that displays only authorized products and prices and that makes sure individual employees don't spend more than their set limits. It targets markets such as plastic injection molding or metal casting, in which hundreds, or even thousands, of companies may compete for contracts requiring very customized work. After qualifying a good number of, say, injection molders in its comprehensive company database, Free Markets will distribute the required software to them all and, finally, run an electronic auction for its client. Of course, by virtue of its booming growth and endlessly extensible protocols, the 'net will constantly demand and absorb every new communications technology that comes its way. The telephone companies' networks, originally designed for handling voice calls, aren't up to the job, so there appears to be a major opportunity in selling them advanced digital switching gear.