divine, inc. and Delano Technology Corporation announced that divine has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Delano. divine will acquire all of the outstanding shares of Delano common stock for a fixed exchange rate in which divine will issue 1.1870 divine shares for each share of Delano common stock, which equates to approximately 51.55 million divine shares. The deal, which will be structured as a plan of arrangement under Canadian law, will be subject to customary regulatory and court approvals, as well as the approval of Delano’s shareholders. Shareholders holding approximately 13 percent of Delano’s outstanding shares have already agreed to vote in favor of the transaction. Combined with divine’s CIM offerings, the acquisition of Delano allows divine to provide fully integrated multi-channel e-marketing, inbound and outbound interaction management, self service and campaign management. www.divine.com

Microsoft Corp. and Altova Inc. released new features to support Microsoft SQL XML and relational data by creating XML views of relational data. The new XML Spy provides enhanced tools support for Microsoft developers and database administrators. XML Spy 4.3 integrated development environment (IDE)’s schema editor now includes full development support for XML schemas, including Microsoft SQLXML extensions, for use in mapping XML schemas to relational databases. New SQLXML developer tools are included with the XML Spy 4.3 Suite, which is available for download and purchase. The XML Spy 4.3 Suite is available as a free upgrade to existing XML Spy customers.
www.xmlspy.com/download.html, www.microsoft.com/sql

Vignette Corp. announced it has developed a series of portlets that provide companies running IBM WebSphere Portal with access to Vignette applications and Vignette managed content. Vignette has developed these portlets to enable its recently announced Vignette V6 MultiSite Content Manager (VMCM) to integrate with the IBM WebSphere Portal. Vignette V6 MultiSite Content Manager, an extension to Vignette V6 Content Suite, enables organizations to manage content on multiple sites and portals with a single application. By using the portlets to integrate Vignette and IBM software, customers can create, produce and deploy content within the IBM WebSphere Portal infrastructure. The Vignette integration portlets for IBM WebSphere Portal will be available by March 31, 2002. www.vignette.com

UK-based internet developer InterMedia PhD launched IQ Author, its easy to use website content management product. With one copy of IQ Author, anyone can easily update their own website content; create pages; move pages around the site; delete old pages. There’s no specialist knowledge required – content creation happens in a familiar word processor-like environment. With IQ Author you can add and delete graphics, change font sizes and colours, and alter the design of the website in just a few seconds. IQ Author includes as standard many of the “high-end” features seen in more expensive products. A single IQ Author powered website can be managed by a team of people all who have their own centrally controlled access privileges. IQ Author is available immediately and starts at just (pounds)5000. www.iqauthor.com

MediaBin Inc. and Inter-Sight Interactive Insight Network announced that they have developed an integrated, end-to-end solution that allows marketers to dynamically publish marketing communications materials to print or to the web. Inter-Sight’s Inter-Q AutoPage software automates the detail-intensive production and proofing tasks required to create virtually any customized print, web or software catalog from a single set of publishing-ready product data and images. AutoPage caches data from corporate product databases and pulls images from MediaBin’s central repository of approved, “gold-standard” marketing and brand assets and then outputs QuarkXPress, InDesign, Acrobat, HTML, or XML files. www.intersight.com, www.mediabin.com

CrownPeak Technology introduced a new high-level template management system that provides business users with the ability to change the look and feel of an entire Web site via a browser interface. The company also announced a browser-based development environment targeted at professional Web developers. This template creation and management interface enables business users to modify templates, preview the resulting changes, schedule those templates live, and redesign the site on the fly. Because output templates are managed as assets in the system, multiple new look-and- feel options can be created, previewed, run through workflow, offered for collaboration and scheduled live. More basic changes to an existing template can be performed through a drag-and-drop interface. More complex actions, like adjusting navigation or setting a new layout, can be performed via a “helper” interface, or directly with the template’s HTML code. Advantage CMS is interoperable with other systems and applications. Connection options available to developers include SOAP, XML, FTP, Web Services, SMTP and ODBC. www.crownpeak.com

Blue Martini Software, Inc. announced the availability of Blue Martini 5. The new suite delivers new functionality, as well as support for the IBM platform through Blue Martini 5 – IBM Edition, which comes bundled with IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM MQ Series on AIX. Blue Martini is delivering new B2B selling and content management capabilities in Blue Martini 5, including lead management, RFQ, return material authorizations and invoice presentment. The new content management features include dynamic publishing for the immediate publication of new content to a website, as well as enhanced remote user functionality such as remote workflow and content preview. Blue Martini 5 is comprised of four applications: Blue Martini Marketing, Blue Martini Commerce, Blue Martini Channels and Blue Martini Service. In addition to the four applications, Blue Martini Software offers content management and integrated analytics, which underpin the four applications. Blue Martini Marketing, Blue Martini Commerce, Blue Martini Channels and Blue Martini Service are currently available. Each application is available separately. Pricing starts at $85,000 per CPU. www.bluemartini.com