News For December, 2003

RenderX, Inc. and X-Hive Corporation announced they have established a strategic initiative focused on technology to deliver a comprehensive solution for the management of XML content and high quality print output of that content. The joint solution enables organizations to shift from SGML content to XML structures. X-Hive will embed RenderX XEP software into their Docato software. X-Hive/Docato is an XML-based content management system designed specifically for technical documentation for the management of technical content in a distributed work environment. RenderX XEP was designed to allow developers and end users to dynamically apply sophisticated styles to XML documents and to publish those documents to different platforms. By aligning these solutions together, X-Hive and RenderX provide an e-business solution for creating PDF, PostScript, and other dynamic document packages from XML content stored in X-Hive databases without the need for users to understand the complexities of XML and XSL FO. www.x-hive.com, www.renderx.com

Yozons Releases Signed & Secured 3.3
12/19/2003

Yozons Inc. has released its 3.3 version of its Signed & Secured web-based business private network software and service. New features in Signed & Secured include more advanced administration capabilities, a performance dashboard, templated messages for repeatedly sending out similar types of contracts or document packages, enhanced customer branding, as well as upgraded its Experian credit-based authentication module which is now offered on a pay-as-you-use model on the hosted web service. Version 3.3 is available immediately. It can be deployed behind a customer's firewall, as a managed service or as a hosted web service. The licensed technology is available in an Office Edition for smaller volume customers, as a hardware appliance for those who need more customization without volume restrictions, and as an enterprise license for high volume and tightly integrated deployments. www.yozons.com

IBM Acquires Green Pasture Software
12/17/2003

IBM announced it has acquired Green Pasture Software, Inc., a privately held provider of document management software based in Corvallis, Oregon. Financial details were not disclosed. Green Pasture's operations will be integrated into IBM's Enterprise Content Management business and Green Pasture products will be available immediately from IBM. This is IBM's third acquisition in its Enterprise Content Management business since 2002. IBM purchased Tarian's records management software in November 2002 and Aptrix's Web content management software in July 2003. Green Pasture Software enables businesses to take advantage of real-time, high-performance document management capabilities to electronically collaborate, edit and manage multiple documents simultaneously. The software helps organizations more easily develop and manage documents that incorporate interrelated parts, such as spreadsheets, multimedia files and computer aided design (CAD) references. www.software.ibm.com/data

Isite Services Introduces Content Management System
12/17/2003

Isite Services, Inc. announced the immediate availability of Control!, a web content management system designed specifically for web designers. Isite's Control! allows content changes without losing control of the layout. This inexpensive product enables content editors to change text, add pictures or add new pages without knowing anything about HTML or page layout. Web designers retain control over the site layout, and can authorize users for a few pages or allow them to restructure major portions of the site. Templates and global parameters ensure design consistency throughout the site. Isite's Control! does not require software installation; it is controlled entirely through the browser. The interface allows authors to focus on content rather than on complicated procedures. Control! starts as low as $5.95 per month. www.isite.net

Microsoft Unveils Pricing & Packaging for BizTalk Server 2004
12/17/2003

Microsoft Corp. unveiled pricing and packaging details for its forthcoming release of BizTalk Server 2004. BizTalk Server 2004 will deliver enhanced business process orchestration functionality, new business activity monitoring (BAM) and human-based workflow capabilities, and a new scalable rules engine. In addition, the new BizTalk Server 2004 license will include copies of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003. BizTalk Server 2004 will enable Standard Edition and Partner Edition customers to connect to more applications and trading partners than in previous versions of the product and will be localized in nine languages, five more than in BizTalk Server 2002. Current BizTalk Server customers with Software Assurance will receive a license for BizTalk Server 2004. BizTalk Server 2004 will be offered in four editions: Enterprise, Standard, Partner and Developer. The pricing for these editions is on par with the 2002 version, with ERP Open B pricing starting at $25,000 CPU for the Enterprise Edition, $7,000 CPU for the Standard Edition, $1,000 CPU for the Partner Edition and $750 per user for the Developer Edition, which can be used for development and testing purposes only. The availability of BizTalk Server 2004 has not yet been announced. www.microsoft.com

Percussion & Convera Partner
12/16/2003

Percussion Software announced that it has formed a partnership with Convera. The partnership is initially focused on utilizing Convera's RetrievalWare search technology for the content delivery environments based on Percussion's Rhythmyx 5 Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system and the newly announced Rhythmyx Express Portal. The Convera RetrievalWare search engine will search content delivered by Rhythmyx 5 to any delivery repository, including Percussion's Rhythmyx Express Portal or any other portal. Working in these content delivery environments, RetrievalWare will provide advanced search capabilities in the simplest to the most complex aggregation of delivery channels, scaling as required to meet an organization's needs. www.convera.com, www.percussion.com

Network Appliance & Documentum Extend Partnership
12/15/2003

Network Appliance, Inc. and Documentum announced that they are extending their existing partnership. Specifically, the two companies will perform joint lab testing at Documentum to certify and support the Documentum ECM platform on NetApp platforms, and Documentum will join the NetApp Developer's Program. The companies will also develop expanded go-to-market strategies, including collaborating to deliver total solutions to mutual customers. The combined solution provides fast access to both current and archived content, simplifies infrastructure management, and scales to a billion data objects while still supporting thousands of concurrent users. www.documentum.com, www.netapp.com

North Plains Announces Web Services Support & Technology Partnership Program
12/15/2003

North Plains Systems Corp. announced that it has released the Integration Broker which provides the next generation of integration and web services for TeleScope Enterprise. TeleScope has an existing suite of integration tools which allow customers to share their data with other business systems, such as the XML Gateway. The Integration Broker, utilizing SOAP, is an extension to these integration capabilities. Concurrent with the release of the Integration Broker, North Plains Systems has initiated a technology partnership program enabling third-party technology suppliers to connect to the TeleScope framework or embed TeleScope's DAM services within their application. North Plains Systems will offer its technology partnership to software vendors in such industries as e-Learning, Marketing Automation, CRM (Customer Relationship Management), Content Management, and others. www.northplains.com

Groxis Releases Grokker 2
12/15/2003

Groxis, Inc. announced general availability of Grokker 2, the latest generation of its visual search product. The new software can organize and visually map thousands of search results in a few seconds from multiple search engines and content sources simultaneously. This creates the opportunity to build Grokker plug-ins to any content source, database, or search engine on the net. The company expects to announce several new plug-ins in the coming months. Grokker 2 goes on sale today at a special price of $49, along with a 30-day free "Try and Buy" offer. Available on PCs today, Grokker 2 will be available for the Apple Mac OS X platform in Q1 2004. www.groxis.com

Plumtree & BackWeb Form Alliance
12/15/2003

Plumtree Software and BackWeb Technologies announced that Plumtree will resell BackWeb's Offline Access Server, giving mobile Enterprise Web users access to applications and content when those users are disconnected from the network. Plumtree will resell a Standard Edition of the BackWeb Offline Access Server with support for the entire Plumtree Enterprise Web Suite; this functionality extends offline access to the Plumtree Corporate Portal, Plumtree Content Server and Plumtree Collaboration Server, Microsoft Office integration portlets and portlets created using Plumtree Studio Server. Plumtree will also resell an Enterprise Edition of BackWeb's Offline Access Server which includes the added capability to offline enable Plumtree's Integration Products, custom portlets, and 3rd party portlets. Users of the offline features can subscribe to specific portlets, content or applications for offline access ensuring that only the selected content will be downloaded when the user logs off the network. BackWeb's Offline Access Server is built to support the Plumtree Corporate Portal 4.5, 4.5WS and 5.0, Collaboration Server 3.0, Content Server 5.0, and Studio Server 2.0. www.backweb.com, www.plumtree.com

Miller Systems & Percussion Partner
12/15/2003

Miller Systems and Percussion Software announced a partnership to offer customers expanded content management solutions. Miller Systems will offer implementation services for Percussion's Rhythmyx Enterprise Content Management (ECM) System to its clients with comprehensive content management requirements. Miller Systems' partnership with Percussion will enable it to design, develop and deliver sophisticated content management solutions more easily for clients' Web sites, intranets, extranets, and enterprise portals. www.percussion.com, www.millersystems.com

Hummingbird & Ricoh Form Technology Alliance
12/15/2003

Hummingbird Ltd. announced a technology alliance with Ricoh Corporation. Hummingbird's relationship with Ricoh extends Hummingbird Enterprise solutions to provide the ability to capture, manage and share scanned documents and photographic images across the enterprise, from multiple sources to a single repository. The Hummingbird and Ricoh technology alliance introduces two distinct applications: Ricoh GlobalScan document scanning software linked to the Hummingbird DM system; and a new geo-imaging solution integrating Hummingbird Enterprise for ESRI with the Ricoh GPS-enabled digital camera. Ricoh GlobalScan software, combined with Ricoh Aficio multi-function products (MFPs), can link to the Hummingbird DM system allowing users to scan and index documents into Hummingbird document management repositories directly from the touch-screen panel of the Ricoh Aficio MFPs. With Ricoh's GlobalScan software architecture all information such as indexes, database information and file types are displayed and accessed easily through the Aficio MFPs front panel. www.ricoh-usa.com, www.hummingbird.com

EMC to Acquire VMware
12/15/2003

EMC Corporation announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire VMware, Inc. in a cash transaction valued at approximately $635 million. The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals, and is expected to be completed early in the first quarter of 2004. The acquisition of VMware will help customers deploy virtualization technologies across their heterogeneous IT infrastructure to create a single pool of available storage and computing resources. This "Virtual Information Infrastructure" will enable organizations to dynamically configure and reconfigure their compute and storage environments. EMC expects to take a charge of approximately $15 to $20 million in the first quarter of 2004 for the value of VMware's in-process research and development costs and other integration expenses. EMC plans to operate VMware as a software subsidiary of EMC, headquartered in Palo Alto and led by Diane Greene, VMware's current President and CEO. VMware will remain focused on developing, selling and servicing VMware's products and solutions. www.vmware.com, www.EMC.com

GlobalSCAPE Announces CuteHTML Pro for Webmasters
12/11/2003

GlobalSCAPE released CuteHTML Pro, a professional version of its Web site development tool, CuteHTML. CuteHTML Pro gives Webmasters granular control over coding, a set of power tools to complete tasks quickly and correctly and doesn't add a lot of unnecessary code. A free 30-day trial of CuteHTML Pro is available immediately for Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP. CuteHTML Pro has a standard list price of $49.99 per single-user license. Volume discounts are offered for quantities of five or more. www.globalscape.com

Cape Clear Announces Cape Clear Data Interchange
12/11/2003

Cape Clear Software announced Cape Clear Data Interchange, a Web Services-based approach to solving the problem of integrating data with enterprise applications. Cape Clear Data Interchange provides a visual environment for transforming diverse data sources, such as text files, spreadsheets, and ZIP files into XML Schema, as well as a runtime capability which securely routes that data to the appropriate back-end application. Once these mappings are created, subsequent files are automatically transformed and routed to the appropriate applications as they arrive. Cape Clear provides wizards that analyze new data and suggest appropriate XML Schema-based representations and mappings. Cape Clear Data Interchange includes pre-built support for a wide variety of data formats including CSV, CICS, CISCO IOS, CORBA, Excel, GSM, EDI, EDIFACT, HL7, Java/J2EE, JDBC, .NET, ODBC, Oracle, Parlay X, SWIFT, SMS/MMS, Sybase, Text, WSDL/SOAP, XML, and ZIP files. Cape Clear Data Interchange includes support for Business Process Execution Language (BPEL). Cape Clear Data Interchange requires the Cape Clear Business Integration Suite. It is available immediately on IBM AIX, Linux, Microsoft Windows, and Sun Solaris. Pricing starts at $75,000. www.capeclear.com

Bluebill Advisors & Gilbane Report Named to EContent 100 List of 'Companies that Matter Most'
12/10/2003

Bluebill Advisors, Inc. and its publication, The Gilbane Report, announced they were named one of the top 100 companies in the digital content industry by EContent magazine, an IT business monthly that focuses on development and implementation of digital content strategies and resources. Bluebill Advisors and The Gilbane Report are acknowledged as leaders in the Consulting Services category on the 'EContent 100,' a list of companies that matter most in the digital content industry as determined by a panel of editors from the magazine and other Information Today, Inc. publications, in the December 2003 issue of the magazine. http://www.econtentmag.com/EContent100/, www.bluebilladvisors.com, www.gilbane.com

W3C Technical Architecture Group Produces "Architecture of the World Wide Web"
12/10/2003

The World Wide Web Consortium announced the publication of "Architecture of the World Wide Web". The authors of this document, W3C's Technical Architecture Group (TAG), invite review by the community of this description of principles that guide the evolution of the Web. The TAG invites comments on the First Edition by 5 March 2004. The Web architecture consists of three fundamental concepts: identification (URIs), interaction (protocols such as HTTP and SOAP), and representation (formats such as HTML, SVG, and PNG). These three branches are typified by the familiar user experience of using a browser to click on a link that identifies a Web site, leading to interaction with the Web site (referred to generically as a "Web resource"), and then to the display of information in the browser. Some of the topics covered by the Architecture Document include important considerations when managing a Web server, such as persistence; how to take advantage of "safe" Web interactions and allow bookmarking and caching; and pitfalls to avoid when using content negotiation. The document also explains how XML fits into the Web, and how to ensure that new formats "play well" on the Web. www.w3.org

Snapbridge Releases Beta Versions of XML Developers Tools for Information Integration
12/9/2003

Snapbridge Software released Beta versions of Snapbridge FDX Information Server Developers Edition and Snapbridge XStudio, XML development tools for creating information integration and content publishing solutions. Snapbridge FDX Information Server Developers Edition is a fully integrated development environment, composed of XStudio and FDX Information Server. XStudio is a graphical design environment, offering drag-and-drop tools for XML and non-XML data for the creation of XSL. FDX Information Server allows developers to rapidly design, test, and debug real-time information integration and content management solutions, then deploy them into a production environment. Beta versions of both products are currently free to developers and are available for download. Snapbridge FDX federates multiple data sources such as data from relational databases, flat files, mainframe data, Web services, digital images from content repositories, streaming feeds, etc., to create composite objects that can be viewed, or updated as part of a transaction. Beta versions of Snapbridge FDX Information Server Developers Edition and XStudio are currently free, and are available for download from the Snapbridge Web site at www.snapbridge.com

Panscopic Announces Integration with Tamino XML Server
12/9/2003

Panscopic announced that it has integrated the Panscopic Scope Server reporting solution with Software AG's Tamino XML Server. The combination provides self-serve access to XML content and allows users to combine XML data with non-XML data. The combined solution leverages existing J2EE and application server infrastructures, is faster than custom coding alternatives and is a cost-effective means to visualize XML content. With self-serve reporting access to enterprise content via native XML, presentation and reporting are enabled, with no delay between content storage and user accessibility. Authorized users have secure access to current business data when they need it. The new solution gives customers: the ability to report off of information stored inside Tamino XML Server without "shredding" the XML data, i.e., without destroying its descriptive structure; the power to combine, filter, and aggregate information from multiple documents stored in Tamino XML Server with XQuery; and support for interactive reporting on Tamino XML data using XQuery. www.softwareagusa.com, www.panscopic.com

Merant Gets SAP NetWeaver Certification
12/9/2003

Merant announced that its content management solution, Merant Collage, achieved certification as part of the SAP NetWeaver Partner Initiative. Merant Collage's "Powered by SAP NetWeaver" status means that it can be deployed on the SAP Web Application Server and accessed through mySAP Enterprise Portal via pre-built iViews. The integration between Merant Collage and the SAP NetWeaver integration and application platform enables users to integrate sources of enterprise data and content from SAP and other vendors to control heterogeneous IT environments. Merant Collage is certified for SAP Web Application Server 6.20 and SAP Enterprise Portal 5.0. www.merant.com

iMarkup Announces Launch of iMarkup/Vignette Solution
12/9/2003

iMarkup Solutions announced the availability of a joint iMarkup/Vignette V7 content management, document annotation and markup solution. The joint solution combines Vignette V7 content management products and iMarkup Server V4 to allow text markups, sticky notes, freeform drawings and other types of annotations to be applied to all types of Web formats, from HTML and ASP to JSP and PDF. www.imarkup.com

XyEnterprise Releases Version 1.1 of XPP Web Services Toolkit; New XPP Personal Edition Available
12/8/2003

XyEnterprise announced that it has released version 1.1 of its XML Professional Publisher (XPP) Web Services Toolkit. XyEnterprise also announced the availability of XPP Personal Edition, a new single-user version of its XML publishing software. Both offerings are available now. Version 1.1 of the XPP Web Services Toolkit adds functions for e-mail notification, support for SOAP attachments, improved file manipulation capability, and other enhancements. XPP users can proof, modify, and publish their documents in a browser from any location. XPP Personal Edition customers include individual users who have had prior experience with XPP at larger organizations, initial deployments in specialty publishing environments (such as STM journals or reference guides), or remote contributors working for larger organizations. XPP Personal Edition includes the XyView interactive interface with composition and editing functionality, the CITI module for generating Contents, Indices, Tables, and Illustrations, and a choice of two Hyphenation and Justification dictionaries. Other optional components (including MathML, XyDiff, EDGAR) are also available. www.xyenterprise.com

Click2learn & Recombo Deliver Learning Content to the Enterprise
12/8/2003

Click2learn in conjunction with partner Recombo announced the availability of a new library of "Aspen-Ready" content developed to run through Click2learn's Aspen Enterprise Productivity Suite without customization or integration. Housed on Recombo's Aspen-specific Web site, the catalog of more than 3000 "Aspen-ready" courses and other learning resources is drawn from third-party content providers and spans a range of subject matter, including software training, business skills, regulation compliance and certification, as well as content relevant to specific vertical industries. To ensure that third-party content will be immediately interoperable with Aspen when it reaches Click2learn's customers, Recombo has installed Aspen in its content integration lab and has developed tools and processes for accelerating content integration. The resulting content catalogs are mapped to Aspen's descriptions of learner paths and competency requirements and tailored to the needs of specific industries. In addition to their ongoing content partnership, Click2Learn and Recombo share a common commitment to promoting the Shareable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM). www.recombo.com/click2learn, www.click2learn.com

Interwoven Announces Availability of Web Change Management Solution
12/8/2003

Interwoven, Inc. announced the availability of the Interwoven Web Change Management Solution. The solution addresses the change requirements of Web applications faced by IT departments today by standardizing the way an organization's code and content changes are aggregated, synchronized, and deployed throughout development, testing, staging, and production environments. While the solution delivers full reporting and version control capabilities required for regulatory compliance, it also speeds application time-to-market and reduces IT costs by automating inefficient, manual change management processes. Components of the Interwoven Web Change Management Solution include Interwoven OpenDeploy Distribution Server software, Interwoven Control Hub Server software, and Interwoven Trusted Advisory Practice. www.interwoven.com

FatWire Expands Worldwide
12/8/2003

FatWire Software announced the establishment of new offices in the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, Holland, Germany, China, Japan, and Singapore. The move follows FatWire's recent acquisition of the Content Server product line from divine, inc. FatWire has also signed reseller agreements with Content Server representatives in Australia and the Nordic region. Covering the European and Asia/Pacific markets, FatWire's facilities will provide local support, sales, and service. www.fatwire.com

Ontopia Announces Ontopia Knowledge Suite Release 2.0
12/5/2003

Ontopia AS Announced the Release 2.0 of the Ontopia Knowledge Suite (OKS). This major release of the OKS brings: the full release of the Web Editor Framework for building custom topic map authoring environments, extension of the query language to cover tasks that had required, either API programming or use of the Navigator Framework tag libraries, new built-in predicates now allow querying all parts of a topic map, support for import and export of RDF data to topic maps, the free-download, Omnigator, now includes support for hierarchy visualization, and more. The OKS uses the Topic Maps model to enable the rapid development of complex systems. Using the OKS, integrators can create representations of diverse information and knowledge models, and then access and manipulate them with a common tool set and query language. The OKS, a Java toolkit for applying Topic Maps functionality, consists of a topic map engine with scalable API, J2EE-compliant toolkits for development of editing and browsing applications, full-text search, schema tools, and persistent and scalable storage of topic maps in an RDBMS. The suite will be available from 19 December 2003. www.ontopia.net

Docucorp Launches Policy Xpress for the Insurance Industry
12/3/2003

Docucorp International announced the availability of Policy Xpress for the insurance industry. Policy Xpress provides insurers with a complete library of fully implemented ISO industry standard forms for the property and casualty (P&C) marketplace. Docucorp's Policy Xpress offering includes: a standard data dictionary, which includes field definitions for all known P&C data elements (used for tagging forms); standard XML schema; ISO forms; pre-defined data mappings for all forms; pre-defined forms triggering; and default systems configuration. Since most P&C insurers utilize industry standard forms, Docucorp used ISO forms as a standard for developing Policy Xpress. As this service offering grows, Docucorp plans to include other industry standard forms for both the P&C and Life insurance industries. www.docucorp.com

Snapbridge Unveils Snapbridge FDX for Enterprise Information Integration (EII)
12/3/2003

Snapbridge Software unveiled Snapbridge FDX, a technology for integrating large amounts of different kinds of data in real-time. Snapbridge FDX fuses multiple data sources such as account detail from relational databases, flat file mainframe data, email correspondence, digital images from content repositories, feeds from third party resources, other information from the Internet, etc., to create composite objects that can be viewed, or updated as part of a transaction--regardless of where the data is stored, how it is formatted or when it was created. Snapbridge FDX capitalizes on XML for structuring and expressing information, allowing the system to operate on structured data and semi-structured content (documents and images) at the same time. Snapbridge FDX information integration software combines technologies for indexing, normalization, aggregation, correlation and "semantic" data delivery, resulting in a comprehensive information integration solution. www.snapbridge.com

Virage Releases Updated VS News Monitoring
12/3/2003

Virage, Inc. announced the latest release of VS News Monitoring, a real-time monitoring and content management solution to automatically track content for time sensitive, strategically significant events. VS News Monitoring helps organizations and government agencies to automatically digitize, categorize, centrally manage, alert and distribute vast collections of news content. With this solution, organizations can process large volumes of content and provide users or analysts up-to-the-minute access and information right at the desktop. In addition, the solution automates the processing and categorizing of the original footage. The solution now manages all forms of unstructured content from the point of ingestion through real-time content access. Powered by Autonomy's Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL), video and rich media are now integrated at the center of other content types and compatible with existing systems. IDOL Server capabilities include automated retrieval, hyperlinking, categorization, alerting, profiling, clustering and personalization. www.virage.com, www.autonomy.com

Visual Century Releases ViA2 2.0
12/3/2003

Visual Century, a technology company based in Barcelona, has released the new 2.0 version of its rich media asset management software ViA2 Platform. Among other new features, ViA2 Platform version 2.0 provides content-based searches of images and video keyframes using advanced shape, color and texture recognition tools as opposed to traditional textual metadata such as descriptors or keywords. Content-based image retrieval features allow the user to load images into the system and search the database for images or video keyframes similar in shape, color and texture. ViA2 Platform offers the possibility to complement content-based searches with traditional textual metadata tools (keywords, descriptions and descriptors) or filters (by date, status, type of document, etc). Equally advanced features of prior versions include asynchronous video analysis, much faster than video reproduction, which can analyze a 50 minute MPEG1 file in just 10 minutes. ViA2 Platform is distributed worldwide by Software AG and will be available from December 2003. www.visualcentury.com

Atomik Xport Personal Edition Available
12/3/2003

Easypress Technologies announced the availability of Atomik Xport Personal Edition, the entry-level XML export software for QuarkXPress. The new software brings 'one-touch XML' export to QuarkXPress, enabling anyone to automatically create XML from their QuarkXPress documents. Atomik Xport Personal Edition comes with a set of global preferences that enable users to customise the XML export to their requirements. A fully functional demonstration version is available for download from www.easypress.com. The demonstration version is available for both Mac and Windows versions of QuarkXPress 4.1 and 5.01. A QuarkXPress 6 version is planned for 2004. Atomik Xport Personal Edition is available direct from Easypress Technologies and its resellers and system integrators worldwide. The suggested retail pricing for a single-user licence is Pounds 695, $995 or Euro 995 depending on the country of purchase. Further pricing for 5, 10, 50 and 100-user licence packs is available upon request. www.easypress.com

Syntext Unveils XML WYSIWYG Editor
12/3/2003

Syntext, Inc. announced the general availability of Serna, a WYSIWYG XML editor. Serna incorporates on-the-fly XSL-driven rendering technology. Serna makes XML editing look and feel like conventional word processing and allows casual users and professional authors to create and maintain complex XML documents. Serna also provides full functionality on both Microsoft Windows and Linux OS. Its optimized, C++-based design makes it responsive on both platforms. Serna is capable of editing multilingual Unicode-based XML documents. The key features of Syntext Serna include: out-of-box support of industrial XML standards DocBook, DITA and TEI; on-the-fly XSL rendering (using XSLT and XSL-FO), on-the-fly document validation (based on XML Schema), XSL-FO and CALS table support, multilingual spell checking and availability for Microsoft Windows (2000, XP) and Linux. www.syntext.com

FatWire Releases Content Server 5.5 & Document Management Module
12/3/2003

FatWire Software announced the general availability of Content Server (CS) 5.5. This release contains DocLink, a new Content Server product that provides a simple interface for managing documents and digital assets, as well as enhancements in the areas of workflow, template creation, and platform support. DocLink is an extension to Windows Explorer that displays the Content Server hierarchy as folders within the familiar Windows Explorer interface. Users can add and update documents by dragging and dropping them between their local desktop folders and Content Server folders. The new version of Content Server allows customers to create and edit templates with Macromedia Dreamweaver. Content Server's workflow capabilities have been enhanced to allow users to take actions on workflow groups, and users across multiple sites can participate in a workflow process. Content Server 5.5 has been enabled on two versions of Linux. For the BEA WebLogic Platform, Content Server supports Linux RedHat 7.2. For IBM WebSphere, Content Server supports Linux SuSE 8.2. Content Server 5.5 supports the IBM WebSphere, BEA WebLogic, and Sun Microsystems SunOne platforms. www.fatwire.com

North Plains Announces Enterprise DAM Technology for Adobe Creative Suite
12/2/2003

North Plains Systems Corp. announced that it will offer an integrated enterprise digital asset management solution for the Adobe Creative Suite. North Plains' integrated support of the Adobe Creative Suite includes three new components for TeleScope Enterprise 7.1: The I-Piece for Adobe XMP enables metadata to be captured at the asset creation stage and maintained within TeleScope throughout the asset's lifecycle; the I-Piece for Adobe InDesign gives non-creative users the ability to search, preview and dynamically interact with InDesign documents directly from a web browser and without the need for the InDesign application; and the Conversion I-Piece for Adobe Graphics Server allows all users to perform complex transformations, regardless of their knowledge of graphic manipulation. The TeleScope I-Pieces for Adobe Creative Suite will be available later this month. www.northplains.com

Ektron Announces CMS300 Version 4.0
12/2/2003

Ektron, Inc. announced version 4.0 of Ektron CMS300. In version 4.0, Ektron delivers several new features including the version 4.0 of Ektron eWebEditPro+XML. Beyond the latest version of Ektron's XML editor, Ektron CMS300 version 4.0 adds: improved audit trail capabilities, index searching to ensure more precisely matched search results by leveraging XML (through partnership with Ixiasoft), enhanced international language support to enable management of metadata and teasers with XML, content randomization functionality, internal search to improve capabilities for locating and accessing content being managed in the system, improved meta-tagging, and industry-specific sample sites to help organizations in hospitality, healthcare, education and other verticals. Ektron's component-based application is used in Microsoft ASP, ASP.Net, PHP or ColdFusion Web application server environments. Pricing is USD$4,999 for a 10-user license and USD$19,999 for enterprise licensing. www.ektron.com

FileNet Teams with Network Appliance to Offer Integrated Enterprise Content Management Solutions
12/2/2003

FileNet Corporation announced a global strategic alliance agreement with Network Appliance, Inc. FileNet and NetApp will coordinate marketing and development activities to integrate and optimize FileNet ECM solutions with NetApp unified storage and information lifecycle management (ILM) solutions. Both companies are working to ensure tight product integration, validation, and support for NetApp fabric-attached storage (FAS) systems, NearStore storage systems, and SnapLock data permanence storage solution within the FileNet P8 product line, including FileNet Image Manager, FileNet Content Manager, and FileNet Records Manager suites. Customers can add the SnapLock functionality to existing NetApp NearStore and FAS systems and deploy it with FileNet's Image Services Connector for SnapLock (ISCS) available in late December 2003. FileNet and NetApp also will develop a plan to test NetApp SnapMirror disaster recovery and high availability software for FileNet P8. FileNet will participate in the NetApp Manage ONTAP partner program. www.filenet.com, www.netapp.com

Contraco to Resell FAST in Germany, Austria & Italy
12/2/2003

Fast Search & Transfer (FAST) and Contraco Consulting & Software Ltd. announced a value-added reseller (VAR) agreement, providing Contraco with FAST Reseller status with a primary focus in Germany, Austria, and Italy. With this agreement FAST Data Search, FAST's enterprise search platform, will be marketed and resold by Contraco to its wide variety of customers either as a stand-alone search solution, or as integrated with other technologies, such as the BRISBANETM technology developed by Contraco. www.intranetsuche.de, www.fastsearch.com

Sirsi Partners with Northern Light
12/2/2003

Sirsi Corporation and Northern Light Group LLC announced an agreement to use the Northern Light Enterprise Search Engine as part of Sirsi Rooms. The Northern Light Enterprise Search Engine will be used to search hand-selected Web resources and return context-specific results, assisting library professionals in finding, evaluating, and indexing the "best of the Web" for each "virtual room" included in the Sirsi Rooms solution. www.northernlight.com, www.sirsi.com

Idiom Announces WorldServer 6
12/2/2003

Idiom Technologies, Inc. announced WorldServer 6, the latest release of its globalization technology. WorldServer 6 features new asset integration capabilities, server-based translation memory enhancements, and a series of workflow improvements that make it easier for global companies to translate and localize the content. WorldServer 6 includes new management and reporting features that help Idiom customers reduce the costs associated with outsourcing translation work to third parties. WorldServer 6 includes support for the latest products from Documentum, Interwoven, Rational/IBM, Oracle, as well as support for emerging XML repositories and standards. A newly enhanced translator workbench allows users to launch external applications, including Word or FrontPage, from within WorldServer. WorldServer 6 adds several new filters, including SGML, XML, XSL, and filters for native Microsoft .DOC, and .PPT formats. New Asset Segmentation capabilities enable customers to segment their translation memory database for specific translation projects. WorldServer 6.0 provides support for XLIFF, the emerging XML standard for sharing translation assets, in addition to the TMX and MTW standards for exchanging different translation memory systems. www.idiominc.com

P.H. Brink Partners with Vasont
12/1/2003

P.H. Brink International, a provider of language solutions, was selected by Progressive Information Technologies to be included in their Vasont Important Partner (VIP) Program. This alliance will combine P.H. Brink's automated workflow system, Otto, with Vasont's content management features and functionality to provide an integrated solution for managing content translation and localization for multilingual publishing in global organizations. Vasont is a content management system for cross-media publishing that centralizes and manages content for multilingual technical documentation, user's guides, and other publications. Vasont's integration with P.H. Brink's Otto allows companies to automatically evaluate and reuse previously translated content. Vasont routes only the new content through P.H. Brink's ISO 9001:2000 certified process, where it is translated. The newly translated content is automatically returned to Vasont where it is managed and ultimately delivered to multiple publications in various formats (e.g., print, CD, Web). www.vasont.com, www.phbrink.com

Aquent Partners with Interwoven
12/1/2003

Aquent and Interwoven have formed a strategic alliance to deliver joint clients integrated enterprise content management solutions for their branding initiatives. Aquent will integrate Interwoven's ECM solution into its brand management solutions. Aquent's consulting division includes its Marketing and Branding Technology (MBT) practice, the division that is partnering with Interwoven. www.aquent.com, www.interwoven.com

Adobe Updates FrameMaker to Version 7.1
12/1/2003

Adobe Systems Incorporated announced Adobe FrameMaker 7.1. FrameMaker 7.1 introduces conditional text support for XML to allow multiple variations of an XML document to be stored in a single file. FrameMaker 7.1 also extends its cross-referencing features to allow links between XML documents. New filters enable PageMaker and Quark XPress files to be migrated into FrameMaker. Corporate publishers can import Photoshop files directly into FrameMaker 7.1. Other additions include support for the JPEG 2000 graphics format and improved filters for handling artwork in Adobe PDF, including native files from Adobe Illustrator, and expanded support for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG). Adobe FrameMaker 7.1 for Windows and Sun Solaris will be available in January 2004 in the United States, Europe and Canada at the Adobe store at www.adobe.com. FrameMaker 7.1, desktop version, for Microsoft Windows has an estimated street price of US$799 for the full version and $199 for the upgrade. On Sun Solaris, the full version has an estimated street price of $1,329 and $279 for the upgrade. www.adobe.com

Plumtree Adds to Enterprise Web Development Kit
12/1/2003

Plumtree Software announced the release of a new add-on to its Enterprise Web Development Kit (EDK), for creating interactive portlets using Microsoft .NET Web Controls. Part of Microsoft's .NET Framework, .NET Web Controls are visual drag-and-drop elements that developers can use to create Web applications. .NET Web Controls created by Microsoft and the .NET development community can now be used without any coding to create portlets within the Plumtree Enterprise Web Suite. The Plumtree EDK offers services, sample code and documentation for using Java and .NET development tools to build portlets and Web services. Plumtree supports JSR 168 and WSRP portlets, Apache's Java Struts, Sophia, Java Server Faces, C#, Visual Basic.NET and Java Server Pages. The newly released add-on to the EDK allows .NET Controls to function as-is within the Enterprise Web as portlets. Using Plumtree's Active Portlets technology for communications between portlets within an application, the Control-based portlet can refresh within the page without causing the rest of the page to refresh. www.plumtree.com

INSCI & IFIN Sistemi Add DAM to Distributor Agreement
12/1/2003

INSCI Corp. announced that document management systems integrator IFIN Sistemi will add INSCI's WebWare ActiveMedia digital asset management software to its product offerings throughout Europe. IFIN Sistemi is an Italy-based value-added reseller (VAR) for INSCI products. The agreement broadens and expands INSCI's European product distribution, and expands IFIN Sistemi's suite of document management solutions. IFIN Sistemi will market ActiveMedia, which integrates rich media into content management systems, marketing and communication portals, web publishing systems, and e-commerce portals to its client base. www.insci.com

Dialog Announces Web Service to Facilitate Content Integration for Web Sites, Enterprise Networks
12/1/2003

Dialog announced the launch of its Dialog API, a Web Service that enables Dialog's content collection and search engine to be integrated transparently into Web sites, enterprise portals, corporate intranets and extranets, software applications and other interactive services. Dialog API is designed for Web site developers, software programmers, enterprise information managers and others to integrate slices of the more than 14 terabytes of premium content -- a vast and continuously updated electronic warehouse of news, business intelligence, current and archived journal articles, patents and research across an array of industries and topics -- along with the Dialog search engine that allows users to pinpoint the specific documents they need within the content sets. Dialog and Cymfony announced that they are now bundling Dialog content -- including business, trade and consumer publications; content from the pharmaceutical, medical and healthcare industries, among others; comprehensive local market intelligence; and worldwide news coverage from 80 countries in 11 languages -- with Cymfony Brand Dashboard, a media measurement and analytics application. Dialog API is based on XML & SOAP. www.dialog.com, www.thomson.com, www.cymfony.com