Adobe Systems introduced Adobe Acrobat 5.0 software, a major upgrade. With Acrobat 5.0, Adobe is enabling organizations to reduce cycle times and increase the efficiency of business processes across their extended enterprises of customers and partners. Acrobat 5.0 offers a number of key benefits that enable business, graphic arts and IT professionals to excel in this new Network Publishing environment where they must work efficiently at Web speed. Tight Web integration based on WebDistributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) and Open DataBase Connectivity (ODBC) allows teams to simultaneously share comments on Adobe PDF files from within a browser. Support for XML makes it simple for users to integrate data, such as metadata and forms data in Adobe PDF files, with back-end systems. And stronger integration with enterprise deployment tools enables IT professionals to auto-install and maintain Acrobat 5.0 over a network to thousands of multi-user or lockdown desktop systems. Acrobat 5.0 software for Windows 95 OSR 2.0, Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0 with service pack 5 or 6, Windows ME and Windows 2000, and Macintosh OS 8.6 (all Web-based capabilities are not available due to Apple OS limitations), 9.0.4 and 9.1, is expected to ship in the United States and Canada in the second quarter of 2001 for an estimated street price of US$249. Registered users of earlier Acrobat software versions can upgrade to Acrobat 5.0 for US$99. French, German and Japanese versions of Acrobat 5.0 are expected to be available shortly after the initial release. Information about other language versions, as well as pricing, upgrade and support policies, is available online. www.adobe.com
Year: 2001 (Page 55 of 66)
IntraNet Solutions, Inc. announced the release of Xpedio 4.6, the latest version of its Xpedio Content Management system. Xpedio 4.6 includes a Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) compliant Enterprise JavaBean (EJB). The new EJB enables companies to easily integrate Xpedio’s content management capabilities into e-business applications built on J2EE application servers, such as commerce sites, corporate portals, customer relationship management applications and net markets. Xpedio 4.6 will be available March 21, 2001 and is priced from $50,000 to $240,000 USD. www.intranetsolutions.com
CoVia announced the general availability of Vortal, the newest addition to CoVia’s suite of enterprise portal solutions. CoVia Vortal enables companies to quickly create industry specific, personalized portals that can be entirely managed by non-technical users who can quickly produce, update and sustain fresh, relative content for any targeted community – all without IT support. Supporting such features as self-registration and password protected access, Vortal enables any organization to add “MyOrganization”-like functionality to their publicly facing web sites in less than 30 days. Using iChannel content syndication and delivery technology, Vortal delivers organization and industry specific news content and information directly to targeted users desktops and enables them to customize their view to suit their particular objectives and interests. Organizations can intersperse company content with syndicated news feeds included with the Vortal application to produce a robust information destination for customers, prospects and partners. Since Vortal also uses many self-service technologies developed as part of the InfoPortal platform, managing and updating the site can be done by anyone capable of operating a web browser. No specific experience or knowledge of XML, HTML or other programming languages is required for day-to-day users to keep the site fresh and valuable. The result is low cost of ownership and more relevant and timely information delivered directly to customers. CoVia Vortal is available now. For additional information, please visit www.covia.com
Gauss announced they have been named as an Advanced Business Partner by IBM through the end of 2001. The IBM Advanced Business Partner designation is part of the PartnerWorld program, which consists of three membership levels – Member, Advanced and Premier. This approval is for the Systems and Services track, which is available to all IBM Business Partners approved to market IBM eServer, IBM Network Integration, Point of Sale, Printer Systems and Storage Products in the United States and Canada. The program recognizes loyal IBM Business Partners for their commitment to building IBM product certifications or equivalent skills and dedication to customer satisfaction processes. Advanced status is awarded to a select group of IBM Business Partners, and they must earn renewal of the designation each year. Approximately 15% of IBM Business Partners-Systems in North America have qualified for Premier or Advanced recognition in 2000. www.gaussinterprise.com
OASIS, together with NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, announced that the second edition of the popular OASIS XML Conformance Test Suite would be publicly available March 15, 2001. The new OASIS conformance test suite, updated to be in sync with XML Second Edition, includes more than 1,000 new tests. Users and vendors may download the OASIS XML Conformance Test Suite Second Edition from the Consortium’s web site, www.oasis-open.org beginning March 15. www.nist.gov, www.oasis-open.org
Portal Wave, Inc. announced three new products that allow enterprises to build EAPs that connect multiple internal systems and connect partner applications. Portal Wave XML B2B Server allows information and transaction exchange across enterprises via XML. Portal Wave Visual Development Studio provides a visual development environment for building Wavelets, plug-in software modules that run within the portal. Portal Wave Application Portal Server (APS) 2.0 is an upgrade to the initial version that enables companies to integrate enterprise solutions into a common e-business platform with a single Web interface. XML B2B Server is an XML messaging server that provides guaranteed, secure delivery of business information and transactions over the Internet in the form of XML documents. Delivery is guaranteed via message queuing and XML return receipt. A simple log allows users to monitor the delivery status of documents such as purchase orders, invoices and inventory levels. XML B2B Server offers support for HTTP and HTTPS for secure document delivery and uses the same browser-based EAP interface for managing and monitoring delivery status. It supports industry standards for XML exchange between partners and is compliant with RosettaNet standards. EAPs provide functionality through Wavelets, plug-in software modules that encapsulate business logic and can provide value from displaying syndicated Internet content to coordinating complex B2B functions across multiple enterprise applications. Visual Development Studio is a Java-based product that leverages the latest JavaBean technology and Java Swing classes. Its main feature is the separation of the user interface from business logic. The new XML B2B Server leverages the enhanced EAP functions now available in APS 2.0. The 2.0 upgrade features an improved user interface that uses style sheets. From selecting content to determining how it appears, improved personalization features allow users greater flexibility to customize their own portal. XML B2B Server, Visual Development Studio and APS 2.0 are available now. www.portalwave.com
Semio Corporation announced the availability of Semio Integration Toolkit. The toolkit is a software development kit and partnership program designed to support the integration of Semio’s content categorization technology into corporate portals and customized applications – such as personalized content delivery or communities of interest. By using Semio’s toolkit, partners and customers quickly build applications that can organize and manage virtually unlimited amounts of unstructured digital information. The Semio Integration Toolkit offers application interfaces to Semio’s Tagger software, which organizes large amounts of corporate data by finding conceptual and practical relationships between any digital document stored on a server. These interfaces enable partners and customers to build solutions with automated cataloging and categorization of unstructured information, offering faster access to the right information in today’s complex business environments. With the release of the Integration Toolkit, partners and customers have multiple possible integration points with the Semio categorization solution. Some partners use the XML generated by Semio Tagger as input for publication and syndication processes. The API published with the Integration Toolkit lets portal vendors and others create tightly integrated solutions leveraging Semio’s automated categorization capabilities. The Semio Integration Toolkit documents the Semio Integration API and the Semio Bundler API, as well as the XML and database formats. It includes sample applications, source code, database, and text corpus, as well as detailed documentation. The Semio Integration Toolkit requires Semio Tagger 4.1 and is available now. www.semio.com
Sybase, Inc. announced Sybase Enterprise Portal 2.0 (EP), which extends portal functionality to mobile and wireless users, business partners and e-marketplaces. The new portal functionality uses Sybase’s wireless technology along with new business-to-business application integration, XML/EDI transformations and globalization. Key components include a J2EE-compliant application server, LDAP directory support, an integrated security framework, concept-based searching and a powerful data server with data synchronization capabilities. Sybase EP supports the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). Sybase EP includes bi-directional mobile messaging capabilities that enable users to both queue outbound messages and receive messages delivered from the network. These messaging services include store-and-forward messaging queuing; push messaging for communications from the network; and user authentication and encryption. Messages can be used to alert users or to initiate an action, such as data synchronization. XML/EDI transformation enables non-EDI-enabled business partners to be quickly integrated into the enterprise’s processes. Enterprise integration adapters allow collaborative data to be directly served into data management systems or applications. Sybase EP’s content management features allow portal users to quickly add, categorize and deploy information for end users. The customizable presentation services allow portal users to interact with applications in their preferred manner. Sybase EP also provides advanced features like automatic currency conversion and language translation. www.sybase.com/ep
