RightWorks Corporation announced the launch of the RightWorks Open Commerce Network, an open, horizontal exchange and virtual content aggregation portal that provides centralized access to products and value-added services over the Internet. In addition, RightWorks announced functionality and scalability enhancements to the RightWorks Universal Content Manager, a secure catalog server. Both announcements are part of RightWorks’ strategic supplier enablement initiative to offer “content anywhere.” Powered by the RightWorks Universal Content Manager, the Open Commerce Network enables suppliers to automate and personalize catalogs at a centralized location and selectively publish them to buying organizations. The RightWorks Open Commerce Network incorporates catalog management software from Cardonet to offer suppliers a second-generation set of online self-service tools for maintaining personalized electronic catalogs, which produces cost saving by reducing infrastructure expenses. It also offers a streamlined approach for updating content across organizations; real-time views of buyer-specific pricing and terms; the ability to maintain a single catalog view while assigning multiple pricing contracts; rapid electronic catalog standardization; the ability to define complex products with an unlimited number of attributes; and an automated content cleansing and normalization process that enables fast, accurate, comprehensive item search results. The RightWorks Open Commerce Network also provides suppliers access to new sales channels. A component of the RightWorks eBusiness Application Suite, the RightWorks Universal Content Manager now features a second-generation catalog engine. The new catalog server enables organizations to maintain millions of SKUs on a single database. Because it is “stateless” and “cacheless,” processing updates to the catalog content takes just minutes. The new catalog server also provides enhanced functionalities such as advanced parametric search, content standardization, flexible pricing schemes, and ability to tunnel out and in. The RightWorks eBusiness Application Suite, including the RightWorks Universal Content Manager, supports 12 local languages including English, UK English, two variations of French (Continental and French Canadian), two variations of Spanish (Continental and Latin), Portuguese, German, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Modules are priced separately and will be available in mid-December. www.rightworks.com
Day: December 11, 2000
Microsoft Corp. announced the release to manufacturing, pricing and licensing of Microsoft BizTalk Server 2000. The latest release in the Microsoft .NET Enterprise Server family, BizTalk Server 2000 is a comprehensive solution that unites enterprise application integration, B2B integration and BizTalk Orchestration technology to allow companies to easily build dynamic business processes that span applications and organizational boundaries. Enterprise Edition. BizTalk Server 2000 Enterprise Edition is targeted at large organizations, trading hubs and digital marketplaces and has support for integrating unlimited internal applications with unlimited trading partners over the Internet. BizTalk Server 2000 Enterprise Edition will support multiple processor and clustering deployments to handle even the largest transaction volumes. The suggested retail price for BizTalk Server 2000 Enterprise Edition is $24,999 per CPU. Standard Edition. BizTalk Server 2000 Standard Edition is targeted at small and medium-sized organizations and has support for integrating up to five internal applications with up to five external trading partners, such as exchanges or digital marketplaces. Intended for small to medium-sized transaction volumes, the standard edition will not have support for multiprocessor or clustered deployments. The suggested retail price of BizTalk Server 2000 Standard Edition is $4,999 per CPU. BizTalk Server 2000 is scheduled to be generally available in January 2001. Microsoft today also published the final version of its BizTalk Framework 2.0 specification. Based on industry standards for data exchange and security such as SOAP 1.1, XML and S/MIME, the BizTalk Framework enables the secure and reliable exchange of business documents over the Internet. Development of the BizTalk Framework is overseen by the BizTalk Steering Committee, which comprises industry partners, consortiums and standards bodies. www.microsoft.com
PyBiz announced a change of policy that makes the use of XDisect, their high-speed XML indexing and search engine free during the development phase of customer projects. PyBiz had been working with pilot customers for evaluation of its XDisect product in an enterprise environment. The December release of XDisect has been greatly improved as a result of incorporating this valuable customer feedback. XDisect now offers very high speed indexing capabilities. It also includes the ability to make incremental changes to the XML data. The new version can easily index millions of XML documents. XDisect supports index sizes of greater than 2 Gigabyte on Windows NT/2000, Solaris and Linux. It has an open XML/HTTP API to make integration to all major programming environments simple and easy. Queries against XML documents can now be done using the standard SQL Language. Since most application developers are familiar with SQL, it makes working with XDisect very rapid. The addition of a new browser based GUI environment helps programmers understand the structure and semantics of their XML data very easily. www.pybiz.com
