InsWeb Corp. has implemented an XML interface designed to streamline the exchange of data among insurance carriers and other online partners connected to the Internet’s leading insurance marketplace. InsWeb has direct connections to 40 participating insurance companies, including State Farm, Nationwide, Progressive, AIG, CNA, Metropolitan Life, and Mutual of Omaha. Offering auto, term life, homeowners, renters and health insurance products, InsWeb also enables consumers to access its shopping services through the industry’s most extensive network of Internet partners. Today, InsWeb has relationships with more than 110 leading Web aggregators, including Yahoo!, GO Network, Snap.com, ZDNet, LookSmart, E*TRADE, Wingspan, and enfoTrust.com. www.insaweb.com
Year: 1999 (Page 45 of 97)
Computer Sciences Corporation announced a new XML tagging convention that allows information to be shared over the Web between disparate workflow applications to achieve end-to-end process interoperability. The new capability is the result of a cooperative effort launched by the DoD’s Program Manager for the Joint Computer-aided Acquisition and Logistics Support (JCALS) Office and CSC. The JCALS workflow manager is a key component of the JCALS system that CSC has developed and implemented for the DoD. JCALS is a joint service information technology program that improves the processes to acquire, develop and maintain U.S. military systems. It is deployed among all the armed services at 60 locations throughout the United States. The new XML-based specification, developed by JCALS program management and CSC, has been enthusiastically endorsed and accepted by the Technical Committee of the Workflow Management Coalition (WfMC). The coalition is a non-profit, international organization that promotes and develops the use of workflow through the establishment of standards for software technology, interoperability and connectivity between workflow products. www.csc.com
Information Mapping, Inc. announced the launch of three seminars aimed at helping organizations optimize information delivery over intranet, extranet, and Internet Web sites. The three seminars, “Designing Information for the Web”, “Writing for the Web”, and “Making Web Content Work”, teach participants to maximize the utility of Web documents by applying techniques for organizing and presenting information. The seminars provide training for organizations that use Web technology to publish large amounts of complex information. Rather than instructing participants in Web programming languages or software, the seminars focus on how to develop and structure compelling site content that takes full advantage of the Web’s capabilities. www.infomap.com.
Verity, Inc. announced that the new version of its Verity K2 Toolkit (v2.1) is shipping and provides enhanced performance and application development options for online stores and online publishers. The product is designed to turn online browsers into buyers by arming Web-based businesses with more advanced text retrieval precision, scalability and application integration features needed to customize product catalog navigation and search on extremely large volumes of content. Newly added support for Active Server Pages and Java technology is included.The Verity K2 Toolkit is available for the Microsoft NT, IBM AIX, HP/UX, Digital Unix, and Sun Solaris operating systems and uses hardware vendors’ latest SMP architectures. Customers can run the Verity K2 applications using any combination of servers running one or more of these operating systems. Verity also offers a full range of consulting services for Verity K2 projects. Pricing is based on specific application requirements. www.verity.com
The Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF) announced the completion of the specification for Common Information Model (CIM) Operations over HTTP v1.0. This specification, which is available on the DMTF Web site at www.dmtf.org/wbem/index.html joins CIM and XML in providing the base of technologies for the DMTF’s WBEM initiative. The CIM Operations over HTTP specification defines a mapping of CIM operations onto HTTP that allows implementations of CIM to interoperate in an open, standardized manner and completes the technologies that support WBEM. With all three of the component pieces of WBEM now in place, CIM, xmlCIM, and CIM Operations over HTTP, vendors can now build WBEM based management solutions. CIM is an object-oriented information model standardized within the DMTF for the purposes of providing a conceptual framework within which any management data may be modeled. Allowing CIM information to be represented in the form of XML brings all of the benefits of XML and its related technologies to distributed management. WBEM is a set of management and Internet standard technologies developed to unify the management of enterprise computing environments. It provides the ability for the industry to deliver a well-integrated set of standards-based management tools, leveraging ubiquitous technologies such as CIM, XML and HTTP. www.dmtf.org
Bowstreet Software Inc. has appointed Robert D. Crowley to the post of president and chief executive officer. Crowley comes to Bowstreet from Arbortext where he was president and CEO. Bowstreet’s current CEO and co-founder, Jack Serfass, will assume the role of co-chairman of Bowstreet, along with co-founder Frank Moss. Bowstreet, was founded in January 1998 and last week announced a $20M second round financing. The company’s Web Services Architecture, which combines XML and directory services technology, is technology for dynamic, frictionless B2B e-commerce. While President and CEO at Arbortext, Crowley positioned the company as a leader in Web-based e-content for e-business, tripling the company value in twelve months. Prior to Arbortext, Crowley was vice president of business development at Kenan Systems Corporation, an enterprise customer care, billing and analysis products firm. Prior to Kenan, Crowley was a senior vice president at USCS International. During his 11 years with California-based USCS. He earned his BS in finance from Villanova University. www.bowstreet.com
Manage.Com and DataChannel, Inc., announced an alliance aimed at helping the emerging generation of on-line businesses make effective use of XML in managing the disparate systems and applications on their networks. The alliance calls for DataChannel to develop XML-based product extensions that will assist Manage.Com’s partners and customers in adapting its FrontLine e.M management software product, which is used to discover, monitor, analyze and diagnose problems across the extended electronic community, or extranet. The development effort will result in an XML “wizard” that gives users an automated way to create documents in manageXML, Manage.Com’s extension of XML specifically for e-management; the documents will specify XML data access, content and display rules for specific, commonly-used network devices, NT systems, web servers and applications. The wizard will be available by the end of 1999 from Manage.Com. www.datachannel.com, www.manage.com.
Nimble.com, announced that it has received a first round of equity financing from Madrona Investment Group and ARCH Venture Partners. The company will use the funding to ramp operations and plans to release its first product early next year for advanced XML database technology for enterprise and e-commerce products. In addition to VC funding, the company has received financial backing from David Pool, CEO of DataChannel. headquartered in Bellevue, Wash. Nimble.com was founded in June, 1999. www.nimble.com
