EasyAsk Inc. (formerly Linguistic Technology Corporation) has been formed to provide Internet and Intranet search engine software for relational databases. EasyAsk Inc. will provide a family of natural language question/answer portal solutions specifically designed to address the idiosyncrasies of indexing, searching and generating the SQL required to access databases efficiently. New products, under the brand name EasyAsk, are being rolled out for a number of specific markets including electronic retailing, data warehousing and enterprise information portals that integrate the search process for text and database sources within a corporation, and ultimately the public portal market. www.easyask.com
Month: September 1999 (Page 5 of 12)
Cogos Consulting, Inc. announced Andromeda2000 for Domino Release 4.0. Based on groupware technology, Andromeda2000 is a “galaxy” of virtual workspaces that supports people working together. Through a set of process management structures, such as project management and pipeline management, Amdromeda2000 for Domino improves knowledge work by organizing the dynamic information flows associated with teamwork. Through a browser, Andromeda2000 for Domino can be used for a stand-alone team or can be scaled to support multiple teams. For example, Andromeda2000 is appropriate for any organization that needs to support large initiatives such as merger integration efforts, global account teams, or implementing ERP systems. Also integrated into the Andromeda200 work structure is: o A wizard setup. Users can create new team spaces quickly, allowing organizations to begin new initiatives instantly while benefiting from built-in coaching on the “basics” of building effective teams. o Directory module. Provides a “map” of the organization’s teams, communities and libraries and connections to them. o Document management features. Features that manage documents such as check-in and check out are integrated into the Andromeda2000 environment. www.cogos.com
ORI Inc.announced the availability of the ClarientXML Server solution to provide real-time XML publishing capabilities for Lotus Notes and Domino 5.0. The new offering will give Lotus Notes users a tool to accelerate e-business development within their organizations. The ClarientXML Server enables corporations to publish existing information or documents residing in Lotus Notes and Domino databases in XML. It allows Lotus Notes and Domino 5.0 servers to communicate using XML, interpret XML documents and perform various Lotus Notes database-related functions. ClarientXML Server accelerates the development of business-to-business e-commerce applications and supply chain management applications for large corporations by facilitating structured communications between computers. www.objres.co, www.lotus.com
IMR announced significant enhancements to its Alchemy document and data management software. These enhancements allow Alchemy users and developers greater access to over 250 e-document types, managed by the Alchemy archival and retrieval software. Service Pack 2 for Alchemy Release 6 increases the efficiency of building a database with its new multi-user database feature. As a result, multiple indexing and scan stations can write to the same database. An Alchemy database stored on a network file server can now be opened for write and read use by simultaneous users and the database can be accessed by read-only Alchemy Search and Alchemy Web Server users even when open by the database builder. The new service pack also adds the ability to annotate image files. Annotations are used to add comments or highlight critical items within an image. Sensitive data can be hidden from view with Alchemy’s new redaction feature which includes the ability to e-mail a redacted image file as an attachment. www.imrgold.com
Workgroup Technology Corporation announced the appointment of Patrick H. Karieva as president, chief executive officer and director effective today, September 20, 1999. The company also announced that John P. McDonough has resigned as the company’s president, chief executive officer and director to pursue another business venture. www.workgroup.com.
OASIS announced plans to expand its technical work and member services by adding several new staff positions. Most of the new personnel will concentrate on advancing the work of XML.org, the open, vendor-neutral industry. As part of the expansion, OASIS is seeking a program director to lead the implementation and management of XML.org, a technical staff member to support the XML.org and OASIS technical working groups and a webmaster to enhance the Consortium’s sites (including the OASIS site, XML.org, the CGM Open site and Robin Cover XML Pages). OASIS will also add a member services manager dedicated to meeting the needs of Sponsor, Contributor, Associate and Individual members of OASIS. www.oasis-open.org
Ardent Software, Inc. announced a strategic initiative designed to allow organizations to deploy a single enterprise information infrastructure (EII) to support a wide variety of strategic solutions, including e-business, analytical applications and enterprise information portals. The EII initiative is a direct response to the growing need to include unstructured information sources, and provides a uniform, enterprise-wide approach to information integration across data, applications and processes. Ardent’s EII initiative will provide users with reliable, timely, and relevant information from structured or unstructured enterprise data sources to support the decision-making process using the best information available. The approach is based on XML and is content- and application-independent. Ardent will deliver its EII solutions in several phases. The first solution is the DataStage Suite for Business Information Infrastructure (BII), The DataStage Suite includes the DataStage data movement tool, DataStage XE, which includes data movement, meta data management and integration, and data quality assurance capabilities, and DataStage Enterprise, which adds mainframe processing and activity management services. In the second phase, Ardent will Web-enable enterprise access to the rich business and technical meta data provided by its BII, delivering broader access to BI reports, associated meta data and related unstructured data such as spreadsheets, presentations, and other content. In the third phase, Ardent plans to deliver the essential foundation for an enterprise portal. Ardent’s EII for enterprise portals will incorporate an integration layer that unifies related content from both structured and unstructured sources, enabling a personalized view of information from across the enterprise. EII for enterprise portals will provide a content- and application-independent platform to support information-intensive applications, including e-business and analytical applications. www.ardentsoftware.com
XMLSolutions Corporation announced the general availability of the ExeterXML Server release 1.0. ExeterXML Server can apply server-side style sheets to XML documents, allowing customers to begin fielding XML applications today without worrying about the client capabilities. ExeterXML Server has the built in logic to recognize the capabilities of the requesting application or browser to determine whether or not to serve an XML or HTML document. The ExeterXML Server utilizes IBM’s WebSphere Application Server to provide servlet processing. XMLSolutions also employs the WebSphere Studio application and VisualAge for Java. Today, the ExeterXML Server supports the Windows NT, Linux, and Solaris 2.5.1 platforms. A future release scheduled for early October will include support for the AIX platform. www.xmls.com
