Scriptics Corporation unveiled a business-to-business integration server. Known as BizConnect, the new software platform delivers an XML infrastructure for developing business-to-business applications. With an innovative business logic paradigm as simple as paper and “Post-It Notes”, and flexible integration with a wide range of software component standards, enterprise applications, legacy software and Internet technologies, BizConnect reduces the time, cost and complexity of business-to-business application development. Scriptics makes it easy for companies to integrate their business-to-business applications with existing enterprise applications, other Internet/XML applications, back-office and front-office systems and software components. BizConnect Author enables developers to create applications by dragging and dropping elements in a schematic view of an XML document. Much like pasting “Post-It” notes on a paper form to indicate how it should be processed, BizConnect Author makes it easy for the developer to attach actions to XML elements indicating how to process the corresponding elements. Many actions are pre-defined with action wizards, and because BizConnect is built on the popular Tcl scripting language, developers can write simple scripts or develop custom wizards for custom actions. Scriptics provides pre-defined options for several common tasks, such as updating information in a database. BizConnect is optimized for enabling server-to-server integration, enabling companies to rapidly develop business-to-business applications that link with their suppliers, partners and customers to automate procurement, order processing, inventory, shipping, order tracking and supply chain management. BizConnect is immediately available as a beta release and will be available for general release in November 1999. A single user development version of BizConnect is available for $5,000, with a group development version available for $12,500. Deployment licenses start at $50,000 for computer systems with up to 4 processors. www.scriptics.com