Commerce One, Inc. announced plans to develop a global content network to deliver high-quality content to Commerce One-powered e-marketplaces, buyers and suppliers across multiple industries worldwide. Final terms are expected to be reached, and definitive documents are expected to be executed, in the fourth quarter of 2000. The network will be based on the Commerce One Content Refinery technology infrastructure and will also include: Commerce One certified content processing partners authorized to deliver content development and processing capabilities in specific regions and industries; Pre-packaged content libraries, delivered through syndication arrangements via Commerce Ones Global Trading Web; and Published content interoperability standards to enable easy content syndication. The foundation of the global content network is the Commerce One Content Refinery solution, a set of software applications, services and methodologies that enable e-marketplaces and content development operations to create, integrate, enhance and maintain catalogs. The Content Refinery solution also enables the syndication and re-use of catalogs across multiple e-marketplaces, via the Global Trading Web. By tapping into pre-built content, the solution can offer reduced time-to-market and lower content cost for e-marketplace operators. The Commerce One Content Refinery solution is currently in limited release, with general availability scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2000. www.commerceone.com
Month: September 2000 (Page 4 of 5)
Excalibur Technologies announced an XML-based video logger, Screening Room Capture. The scaleable, standards-based video logger will be available as a stand-alone product or as part of Excalibur’s Screening Room product for end-to-end capture, encoding, indexing, management and re-purposing of video content. Screening Room Capture extracts visual and textual metadata from analog or digital video by controlling multiple subsystems for closed-captioned text extraction, voice-to-text servers, video analysis, manual annotation, device control, and timecode management. The product can control multiple video encoders no matter where they reside, enabling parallel, multiple format, simultaneous encoding. Due to its distributable nature, video logging capabilities and subsystems can now be scaled across as many computers as necessary. By encapsulating all metadata into XML, Screening Room Capture allows the easy integration of video logging into many other systems, such as an existing digital asset management or media asset management solution, or third party database. Screening Room Capture, when combined with Screening Room 2.2, provides a complete end-to-end system for video content management. Excalibur Screening Room is a fully integrated, modular system that gives any enterprise power to intelligently capture, manage, re-use and publish video content. www.excalib.com.
WebCollage unveiled WebCollage Syndicator, a software solution that lets companies expand their reach and interact with users not only on their own sites but wherever they are on the Web. Designed to ensure rapid time to market for premium partnerships, Syndicator lets e-businesses package live and complete Web-based business applications as “e-services,” then syndicates them by placing them directly on partner Web sites. With WebCollage Syndicator companies can define e-services that capture their entire Web experience. Business partners can then exchange and incorporate all the relevant e-services that their users need to complete specific tasks into one place. WebCollage Syndicator replaces today’s phenomenon of sending users to other sites in order to access services and applications by bringing these applications to where users already are. WebCollage Syndicator applies dynamic Web site integration. When users visit a Web site, it pulls and “blends” syndicated e-services into the pages presented to users. Any Web page that is fused together dynamically from multiple sources would still appear to users as a single uniform page. WebCollage Syndicator’s unique capabilities then enable users to carry out complete Web transactions from multiple sources without leaving the site they are at. Other Web integration approaches, often using XML, focus on data exchange but do not address the sharing of an application’s user interface and Web experience. Companies can spend months re-building a partner application’s user experience into their own site, slowing time to market. Syndicator, using WebCollage’s Web Services Markup Language (WSML) technology, is designed specifically to overcome these limitations. It powers the syndication of complete e-services to multiple partner sites while maintaining the user experience and without requiring the partners to install any software. WebCollage Syndicator is available from WebCollage, Inc. The license fee for the Syndicator software is based on the number of partners served with e-services. Pricing starts at $50,000. www.webcollage.com
Members of the Global Commerce Initiative (GCI) announced plans to use ebXML as the backbone of their new data exchange standard for business-to-business trade in the consumer goods industry. ebXML, an initiative of the United Nations CEFACT and OASIS, will provide the technical infrastructure for the Global Commerce Internet Protocol, a set of recommendations governing the management of data for Internet communication and other B2B interactions. GCI members include 40 major manufacturers and retailers as well as eight trade associations, which in total represent 850,000 companies around the world. Exchanges such as Transora, the WorldWide Retail Exchange, GlobalNetXchange, and CPGmarket.com are taking active roles in the GCI development. EAN and the UCC have made a major contribution to GCI’s effort to quickly standardize Internet trading in the consumer products industry with the first in a series of electronic commerce standards. In order to support the GCI Internet Protocol, the UCC and EAN undertook to provide GCI with a series of electronic commerce standards for the following processes: Item Synchronization, Party, Simple Purchase Order and Dispatch (Advance Ship Notice). This project encompassed the creation of business models, global data dictionaries, and XML schemas. GCI proof-of-concept trials are underway and the organization plans to demonstrate its protocol at the upcoming ebXML meeting in Tokyo, November 6, 2000. www.ebXML.org
Progress Software Corporation and Commerce One, Inc. announced that Commerce One has selected Progress SonicMQ E-Business Messaging server for Commerce One’s MarketSite Portal Solution. SonicMQ provides a scalable and reliable transport for the exchange of business-critical information over the Internet, which helps companies move global trade to the Web. Messages, which can range from simple purchase orders to complex CAD documents, may be instantly and securely delivered over the Internet by using sophisticated routing algorithms to determine the fastest delivery path and ensure high system availability. As new trading partners or communities are added to the Commerce One Global Trading Web, an extensive worldwide B2B trading community, the SonicMQ-based infrastructure provides access to all new destinations without requiring any local configuration or application changes. MarketSite Portal Solution allows corporations and Internet market makers to build open electronic marketplaces and link them to the Commerce One Global Trading Web. This set of products and services enables real-time, interactive transactions between trading partners, suppliers, service providers and market makers. Through the use of SonicMQ and an XML-based transaction infrastructure, value-added business services such as auctions, content management, payment services and logistics can be rapidly deployed and leveraged on e-marketplaces. www.commerceone.com, www.progress.com
webMethods, Inc. unveiled webMethods for Trading Networks, a software package that will provide Global 2000 companies and B2B marketplaces with a packaged infrastructure for building, managing and analyzing B2B trading networks. With webMethods for Trading Networks, organizations now have a point-and-click solution for profiling partner interactions, defining document exchange, and establishing business process rules between companies. In addition, this product offers operational and business-level views of the flow of information through the network, allowing companies to understand the business impact and R.O.I. of their entire range of B2Bi initiatives. webMethods for Trading Networks bundles a configurable trading network infrastructure with graphical monitoring, management and analysis tools. With streamlined profiling capabilities and robust operational management tools to maintain the health of the network, webMethods for Trading Networks enables integration of trading partners regardless of their level of technological sophistication. Additionally, webMethods for Trading Networks offers visibility into an organization’s trading network processes and adds intelligence to their B2B initiatives through sophisticated data analysis. webMethods for Trading Networks is priced on a per CPU basis with prices starting at $350,000 and will be generally available at the end of September. www.webMethods.com
W3C announced the advancement of the XML Base specification to Candidate Recommendation status. The document describes a mechanism for providing base URI services to XLink and to other XML applications benefiting from control over relative URIs. The Candidate Recommendation period ends 8 December, 2000, when the XML Linking Working Group expects to deliver proof of use of XML Base in new specifications, and a report of successful XML Base implementations in applications based on them. Implementors are invited to contact the Working Group chairs to participate. Comments may be sent to the public mailing list www-xml-linking-comments@w3.org. Also, the fourth Working Draft of Canonical XML Version 1.0 has been released, addressing comments received during Last Call that ended 28 July. It is the goal of this specification to establish a method for determining whether two documents are identical, or whether an application has not changed a document, except for transformations permitted by XML 1.0 and Namespaces in XML. Please send comments to the editor with a cc: to the public mailing list w3c-ietf-xmldsig@w3.org. The DOM Working Group has published the first public Working Drafts of the Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3. The DOM is a platform- and language-neutral interface that allows programs and scripts to dynamically access and update the content, structure, and style of documents. Comments are invited on the public mailing list www-dom@w3.org. www.w3c.org
Optika Inc. and webMethods, Inc. announced a partnership to enhance Optika’s web collaboration and resolution offerings. Optika will use webMethods’ end-to-end B2Bi Solutions to build the Acorde XML Gateway, a conduit for dynamic exchange of B2B transaction information. Through this partnership, Optika will leverage the open architecture of webMethods B2Bi solutions to create an XML gateway that allows real-time direct exchange of transaction information between disparate systems both internal and external to the organization, facilitating quick and efficient resolution of B2B transaction discrepancies. webMethods has relationships with B2B software providers and offers pre-built adapters to their systems — the same systems that Optika’s existing and potential customers use to operate their businesses. Through this partnership, Optika and webMethods will pursue joint sales and marketing opportunities with both new and existing clients in a wide variety of industries. www.webMethods.com, www.optika.com
