Percussion Software announced a partnership with GlobalSight Corporation. The integration of Percussion’s Rhythmyx Content Manager, a native XML content management system, and GlobalSight System3 allows multinational companies to develop and maintain Web sites in the language and culture of target markets worldwide. A major barrier to global e-business success is the difficulty in delivering compelling and timely multilingual information to buyers and partners worldwide. As a result, content must be customized to address differences in language, culture and local business practices for each market. To address these complexities, companies must efficiently acquire and localize content from multiple sources, data formats and languages. Together, Rhythmyx Content Manager and GlobalSight System3 enable companies to acquire content from any source in any format and transform that content for any delivery mechanism. With the workflow capabilities in the Rhythmyx/System3 solution, multinational companies can effectively create and automate the global content approval process, including the translation of that content into multiple languages. All the linguistic, technical, organizational, and managerial challenges in overseeing multilingual, multicultural content are addressed, enabling businesses to successfully compete in the global marketplace. www.percussion.com, www.globalsight.com
Year: 2001 (Page 66 of 66)
MERANT announced a definitive agreement to acquire the Enterprise Division of NetObjects for U.S. $18 million (approximately (pound)12 million pounds sterling) payable in cash on completion, which is anticipated to take place by March 2001. The value of the net assets, subject of the transaction, are $2.2 million U.S. dollars. In the year-ended September 2000, the Enterprise Division generated approximately $10 million U.S. dollars in revenue and the loss attributable to the net assets being acquired amounted to $7.6 million. The approximately 40 employees of the Enterprise Division will become MERANT employees. As part of this transaction IBM, a substantial owner of NetObjects, will be making a limited equity investment in MERANT on the open market after the transaction closes to demonstrate its commitment to MERANT. With this strategic acquisition, MERANT will offer a solution from a single provider to manage the entire e-business assets of the enterprise. The acquisition enhances MERANT’s Egility Enterprise Change Management solution by embracing the convergence of applications and web content. The combination expands MERANT’s offering of traditional software configuration management with web content management. www.merant.com
Bowne Global Solutions announced an advanced tool for the creation and management of terminology assets. TermGLOBAL facilitates the creation of a linguistic repository capable of storing an entire organization’s linguistic resources in a single location, accessible through a web browser. The TermGLOBAL linguistic repository is a multi-tier system which uses Unicode throughout the application. Based on XML, it is a B2B application that serves multiple clients, both web and non-web. TermGLOBAL is accessible by Bowne linguists and clients, who have access to general as well as proprietary terminology, through a secure Internet gateway. The advantages of the new product include opportunities for increasing leverage besides those currently gained through Translation Memories, as well as the establishment of Pattern translation, or the ability to use patterns with variables in order to translate identical linguistic structures. Planned enhancements include a dictionary resource for linguistic tools, in which several Bowne localization tools will use the linguistic- and meta-data in the repository to assess the level of difficulty and other project parameters. The database may also be used as a corpus for R&D objectives, enabling the identification of linguistic behaviors, structures, and other features in order to create tools that can be used for multiple purposes and ultimately to create the base for a Natural Language Processing environment. www.bowneglobal.com
March Networks Corporation and Ottawa- based Mainsource Software Corporation announced that March Networks will acquire Mainsource through an exchange of cash and shares. The acquisition, the third for March Networks since Terry Matthews launched the new company in August 2000, is expected to be final before February 2001. The Mainsource acquisition provides March Networks with a highly-scalable content management system that will become a key capability for the delivery of the many complex and distributed IP broadband applications that the company has identified. The multi-platform architecture of the system supports all industry standard database platforms, including Oracle, Sun and Microsoft. In December 2000, March Networks announced the acquisition of Toronto-based Infopreneur to expand the company’s web-centric content delivery expertise. The company’s first acquisition took place in November 2000 when it acquired Ottawa-based Elcombe Systems Limited in a move to gain technology and domain-knowledge of the health care market. www.mainsrc.com, www.marchnetworks.com
RosettaNet has released a new version of its implementation framework core, which provides the foundational processes and message packaging specifications needed for supply chain partners to conduct e-business using RosettaNet standards. Version 2.0 of the RosettaNet Implementation Framework (RNIF), based directly on the real-world implementation experience from consortium partners, now supports intermediaries such as e-marketplaces and exchanges, accommodates complex business messages, and contains additional provisions for security, privacy and non-repudiation. The new implementation framework supports complex business messages. For example, companies can now send supporting files such as .pdf, .gif, or other binary documents with their XML-based RosettaNet business messages. This capability can greatly enhance the quality of the information transmitted between trading partners. Additional security measures have been added as well. Companies can take advantage of additional privacy and integrity measures such as digital signatures and payload encryption by using S/MIME. The S/MIME specification replaces RosettaNet’s previous format and keeps the RNIF closely aligned with other cross-industry implementation frameworks. In an effort to assist small- to medium-sized businesses with limited capabilities in their applications, RosettaNet has included support for synchronous responses within RNIF v2.0. Using this support, an application replies to a request by returning the results on the same connection on which the request was received. This support allows simple applications incapable of complex server-like behavior to participate in a RosettaNet-based trading relationship. RNIF v2.0 also includes support for HTTP and SMTP transfer protocols to accommodate e-marketplaces, exchanges, portals and other intermediaries that route information on behalf of buyers and sellers. RNIF v2.0 specifies what information to add to message headers to enable these intermediaries to correctly route the business messages to their final destinations. RNIF v2.0 has been approved by the RosettaNet membership and now enters its validation phase where it will gain significant industry implementation use. During this validation period, RosettaNet encourages partners to implement the framework. Implementers should expect minor changes to the specification as a result of implementation experience gained during the validation phase. RNIF v1.1 will continue to be supported by the consortium until the next major release. RNIF v2.0 can now be downloaded from the RosettaNet Web site at www.rosettanet.org
Microsoft Corp. announced branding and RC1 availability for its forthcoming enterprise portal solution, Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server. Previously code-named “Tahoe,” SharePoint Portal Server is the flexible portal solution from Microsoft that allows companies to easily find, share and publish information. The new server provides seamless knowledge portal integration with the Microsoft Office and Windows operating system productivity desktop environment, allowing enterprise customers to integrate document management, search, subscriptions and online discussions into their document collaboration process. SharePoint Portal Server has broad support for enterprise content sources and data types so users can find pertinent information quickly and easily. With one of the most comprehensive, timely and relevant search engines in the industry, SharePoint Portal Server can index multiple content sources, including Web servers, file servers, Exchange public folders, Lotus Notes databases, etc., and present search results based on a probabilistic ranking algorithm. In addition, SharePoint Portal Server supports adaptive crawling, allowing the server to “learn” where information changes the most frequently on relevant sites. In addition to its content aggregation technology, SharePoint Portal Server includes document management features that allow companies to incorporate business processes into their portal solution through check-in/check-out, version tracking and approval routing functionality. Built on Internet and industry standards such as XML, the digital dashboard-based UI can be easily customized and extended by adding Web Parts: reusable components that can contain any kind of Web-based information. SharePoint Portal Server also allows customers to search and index information stored in Web sites based on SharePoint Team Services, a new server-based team Web site solution from Microsoft that allows small teams and ad hoc groups to easily manage activities and work together. RC1 is now available for download from the Microsoft Web site at www.microsoft.com/sharepoint/ and will be the only release candidate before the final version, due later this year. www.microsoft.com
iPlanet E-Commerce Solutions, a Sun-Netscape Alliance, announced the availability of iPlanet ECXpert 3.5, a server-side B2B software solution that routes and converts documents between designated senders and receivers. iPlanet ECXpert works across multiple protocols, partner types, and technology types. iPlanet ECXpert 3.5 software enhances the queuing of documents, minimizes information bottlenecks and efficiently processes rapidly-submitted data. With priority processing, iPlanet ECXpert now has the ability to handle translations based on specific rules and priorities. While some vendors force organizations to process documents on a first-in, first-out basis, iPlanet ECXpert provides organizational flexibility to process by priority type. High priority documents will be handled immediately and processed before lower priority documents. This minimizes companies’ time to market based on expedient implementation of document processing. In conjunction with billing codes, this allows a service provider to offer different pricing for different levels of service. iPlanet ECXpert 3.5 now offers full XML parsing support, full XML translation support, priority processing, billing code support, HTTP/SSL support, and support for the automotive standard -HTTP for AIAG. iPlanet ECXpert’s XML capabilities allow XML to be sent and received from any business partner, irrespective of document type, thereby substantially increasing the information exchange capabilities within the trading network. This enables organizations to expand the reach of their trading networks by an order of magnitude, and iPlanet ECXpert provides the bridge between disparate systems, processes and technologies used by each partner in the network. iPlanet ECXpert is immediately available beginning at a list price of $100,00 per two CPU’s. Pricing is subject to change. www.iplanet.com
Dow Jones & Company announced it is providing its Market Data Markup Language to a financial industry consortium as a starting point toward development of an XML-based global standard for market data delivery. The Market Data Markup Language (MDML), developed by Dow Jones is now posted at www.fisd.net, the web site of the Financial Information Services Division (FISD) of the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA). The FISD — a forum for business and technical issues related to the distribution of financial information — recently formed a working group to coordinate XML efforts in the market data industry. Dow Jones contributed its MDML to speed development of a common framework to publish market data. The Dow Jones MDML has been in production for about two years at The Wall Street Journal Online at WSJ.com. The language is used for posting text and statistical data on the web site, and as a system interchange format within Dow Jones and with entities such as Factiva, a joint venture of Dow Jones and Reuters. The FISD market data work will be done in coordination with other XML initiatives, including XBRL, or Extensible Business Reporting Language. The XBRL consortium (www.xbrl.org) is developing XML vocabularies for corporate earnings and regulatory filings. Dow Jones, Reuters Group, and Reuters’ Lipper subsidiary are all participants in XBRL. The FISD effort also dovetails with two XML standards developed by the International Press Telecommunications Council, of which Dow Jones, Associated Press, and Reuters are all members: NewsML is an XML model for packaging and managing news objects of any media type; the News Industry Text Format is an XML application for markup of news text. www.fisd.net
