Lotus Development Corp. and Microsoft Corp. tody announced their intent to integrate Microsoft Windows Media Technologies into Lotus’ Notes and Domino Release 5 collaboration software products via IBM’s HotMedia Connect technology. This strategic distribution, development and licensing agreement will deliver the benefits of Microsoft streaming multimedia technology to Notes and Domino R5 users worldwide as well as tighten the integration between Lotus and Microsoft technologies. Initially Lotus plans to ship a partially integrated version of Microsoft Windows Media Player with an upcoming version of Lotus Notes and Domino Release 5. Lotus and Microsoft intend to integrate upcoming versions of Windows Media Technologies with a future update version of Notes and Domino R5 via HotMedia Connect for Domino technology. Additional availability and pricing details will be announced next year. www.lotus.com, www.microsoft.com
Author: NewsShark (Page 693 of 749)
Active Software, Inc., provider of eBusiness integration software products, and Art Technology Group,Inc., developers of e-commerce and online personalization applications, announced the formation of a strategic alliance to enable businesses to deliver Internet Customer Relationship Management (ICRM) solutions integrated with enterprise applications, including Oracle, PeopleSoft and SAP. ATG offers the Dynamo suite of e-commerce and personalization software products for enabling large-scale e-commerce solutions that extend customer relationships across the enterprise. ATG will develop, market and resell a Dynamo Adapter for Active Software’s ActiveWorks Integration System. The Dynamo Adapter for Active Works allows businesses to draw customer information from multiple data sources enabling a seamless flow of information throughout the extended enterprise. www.activesw.com, www.atg.com
Commerce One, Inc. announced the Commerce One Common Business Library (CBL) 2.0, an XML specification for the cross-industry exchange of business documents such as purchase orders, invoices, product descriptions, and shipping schedules. Commerce One CBL 2.0 is a set of XML building blocks and a document framework that allows the creation of reusable XML documents for electronic commerce. Using the CBL 2.0 document framework, businesses can conduct electronic commerce by exchanging business documents of different types. To enable companies to preserve their investment in existing standards such as traditional EDI, CBL 2.0 provides a transition path to XML-based commerce capability. Based on a broad range of Internet and commerce-related industry standards and specifications, CBL 2.0 is endorsed by the Microsoft BizTalk initiative, OASIS, the UN/CEFACT Techniques and Methodologies Working Group, and CommerceNet and its eCo Framework Project and Working Group. To encourage its industry-wide adoption and development, CBL 2.0 is free of charge and available immediately from e-commerce document repositories including XML.org, BizTalk.org, CommerceNet and Commerce One MarketSite.net. www.commerceone.com
Bluestone Software Inc. announced complementary product agreements with Cloudscape Inc., Extensibility Inc., Fiorano Software Inc., PointBase Inc., and Vervet Logic to bundle and integrate their XML technologies with Bluestone Visual-XML, the company’s toolkit for building XML applications. Fiorano/EMS brings its Java message-queuing and publish-subscribe communications listener and dispatcher, while Cloudscape adds its 100% Pure Java SQL database management system and its Cloudsync application synchronization facility. PointBase extends Bluestone’s XML functionality with its own 100% Pure Java SQL DBMS. In addition, Bluestone Visual-XML users now have access to a pair of advanced XML authoring tools — Extensibility’s XML Authority v1.0 XML schema design and conversion tool and Vervet Logic’s XML Pro v2.0 XML editor. Bluestone will bundle all five companion products with Bluestone Visual-XML, which will support plug-and-play integration of the products. www.bluestone.com.
iXOS Software AG, announced that its new web-enabled iXOS-ARCHIVE version 3.5 is now available. iXOS-ARCHIVE 3.5 has an integrated HTTP interface (already certified by SAP for interfacing with SAP ArchiveLink Release 4.5), that extends access to information via the web in addition to allowing business document management using a standard web browser. www.ixos.com
Ariba, Inc. announced it has completed its integration of Commerce XML (cXML) with the Microsoft BizTalk Framework. A member of the BizTalk Steering Committee, Ariba has integrated cXML with the BizTalk Framework to enable electronic exchange of business-to-business content, such as catalogs and purchase orders, between Ariba eCommerce solutions and the multitude of supplier Web sites based on the BizTalk Framework. cXML supports all supplier content and catalog methods, including buyer-managed, supplier-managed, content management services, electronic marketplaces, and Web-based sourcing organizations. In addition, cXML defines a request/response process for the exchange of transaction information for purchase orders, change orders, acknowledgments, status updates, ship notifications and other transactions. cXML is integrated with the BizTalk Framework using the XML-data Reduced (XDR) syntax. A list of supporting companies and additional information is available at www.cxml.org. www.ariba.com
Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of the freely downloadable BizTalk JumpStart Kit to aid developers in the immediate creation of BizTalk-compatible software applications. The Microsoft BizTalk JumpStart Kit makes it easier for developers to use XML schemas and the BizTalk Framework in current development projects and existing applications and to realize the benefits of XML for electronic-commerce and application integration within and across organizations. In addition, a library for BizTalk-compatible schemas is now live on the BizTalk.Org Web site, with more than 100 freely available schemas submitted by 30 organizations. www.microsoft.com
Microsoft Corp. announced Windows Distributed interNet Architecture (Windows DNA) 2000, a comprehensive, integrated platform for building and operating distributed Web applications as well as Internet-based Web services. Web services represent an evolution from today’s Web sites that simply deliver pages to a browser. Richer, more personalized and more proactive, these Web services can directly link applications, services and devices with one another over the Internet. Microsoft is creating tools and infrastructure to make Web services into reusable, universally programmable building blocks that can be easily created, combined and augmented by developers around the world. Once programmable, Web services become another piece in the assembly of solutions that can span multiple software components, business processes and applications anywhere on the Internet. Windows DNA 2000 builds upon XML as its fundamental foundation to put the resources of the entire Internet within reach of developers. The Windows DNA 2000 family of solutions includes: Microsoft Windows 2000, Microsoft Commerce Server 4.0, Microsoft BizTalk Server, Microsoft “Babylon” Integration Server which provides bi-directional network, data and application integration with legacy hosts, Microsoft AppCenter, a new product that makes deployment and management of Windows DNA-based applications across high availability server “farms” as easy as managing a single server, Microsoft SQL Server “Shiloh”, the next generation of SQL Server 7.0 that adds native XML support and integrated data-mining capabilities, and Microsoft Visual Studio. Microsoft also submitted to the IETF an Internet draft specification for the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), an XML-based mechanism that bridges different object models over the Internet and provides an open mechanism for Web services to communicate with one another. Windows 2000 is expected to release to manufacturing this year. The other server products in the Windows DNA 2000 family will enter beta testing this year and are expected to be available by the middle of 2000. www.microsoft.com
