adXML.org announced the successful transmittal of the first live digital insertion order “written” in the adXML vocabulary. Having launched its first beta in February of this year, adXML.org is this week proposing a 1.0 release of the online DTD section of the adXML specification. adXML.org’s end-of-year goal is to include all media types in its final release. The first digital insertion order was transmitted by Mediaplex, Inc. and received on the publisher side by L90, Inc. Utilizing the adXML vocabulary, the order described all data specifications for the placement of an online campaign for a automobile advertiser. Mediaplex performed the campaign planning, buying and ad-serving functions on behalf of its client, Critical Mass, an interactive advertising agency. adXML.org was launched in December 1999 as a vendor-independent initiative to develop business practices and infrastructure standards for the full automation of the exchange of commerce and content data among all sectors of the advertising industry. Now composed of more than 140 participating companies, adXML.org has defined nine subcommittees representing traditional media including print, TV, radio and outdoor, as well as new media including online, e-mail, set-top box/broadband and the wireless market. www.adxml.org

Ironside Technologies Inc. announced that they have reached agreement-in-principle with Commerce One, Inc. for the purpose of real-time seller/buyer connectivity. Commerce One and Ironside expect to finalize terms and execute definitive agreements by summer 2000. Ironside intends to integrate its Ironworks sell-side product suite and Ironside Network service offering into Commerce One MarketSite and Global Trading Web solutions. Ironside expects to support Commerce One’s xCBL transactions within the Ironworks product suite and the Ironside Network service. XCBL is expected to provide Ironside Powered suppliers access to an extensive worldwide business-buyer community. The Ironworks 4.0 product suite will provide integration capability to the Commerce One MarketSite Global Trading Portal, as well as individual trading exchanges running on the MarketSite Portal Solution. Additionally, the Ironside Network “real-time exchange to the exchanges” is expected to provide suppliers on-demand real-time integration into the entire MarketSite community of exchanges. In addition, Ironside and Commerce One expect to collaborate to streamline and simplify content management functions, working together to homogenize supplier catalog information and automate content management functions. www.ironside.com, www.commerceone.com

Canto announced Cumulus 5 – Enterprise Edition, designed to manage and archive all types of digital assets used in production, publishing, communication, and other workflows. The release of the Enterprise Edition completes the Cumulus product line, which also includes a Single User Edition and a Workgroup Edition. Varying Options exist for the different Editions. The Enterprise Edition embraces and extends the success of the Workgroup Edition. It offers the most complete set of functionality and benefits. Cumulus 5 – Enterprise Edition will be available this month to a number of pre-selected customer sites. Broad availability through System Integrators and Solution Partners will follow in Q3/00. The “starter kit” of the Enterprise Edition is priced at US$33,000 and includes the server application and 20 concurrent client licenses. It also includes the Cumulus Internet Client, the Browser, the Vault and URL AssetStore Options, and five days of technical service. Additional client licenses are available for US$400 per client. Additional service days are available at US$1,500. The Oracle Connect Module will be announced separately. Maintenance contracts and the Cumulus SDK will be offered separately. The Cumulus 5 – Enterprise Edition is a fully cross-platform solution. The server software will be available for Solaris, Linux, Windows 2000 and MacOS X. The client software is available for MacOS and Windows. It also includes Internet access through standard Web Browsers. www.canto.com

Software AG USA has begun selling Tamino to U.S. companies. A native XML information server, Tamino is part of a full suite of native XML products coming from Software AG. Tamino provides a complete Web-enabled data management system for data exchange and application integration. Unlike relational databases, Tamino stores, retrieves and exchanges data in XML as its natural format, without the need for conversion to other formats. All of Software AG’s products and services are specifically geared to the requirements of B2B solutions and work well to integrate front-and-back-office solutions, allowing e-business services to function as an integral part of a company’s overall business. Tamino leverages the main benefit of XML: the dramatic increase in interoperability of data among applications. Using Tamino, data structures of any kind can be expressed in XML format and stored and treated as XML objects. XML data without a previously defined structure is also accepted and stored, unlike the classical database systems that require explicit structuring. Software AG’s database technologies, including field compression and record caching, as well as high volume capabilities, provide an XML-based data management system capable of handling large volumes of data for high throughput which can manage concurrent user requests very efficiently for high performance. Tamino also supports single-sign-on, industry-standard security systems and existing methods of encryption (such as RACF, NTLM, Kerberos, and SSL), integrating security concepts at different lTamino is available immediately for Windows NT. A version for Unix will be available during second quarter 2000, with versions for Linux and IBM mainframes following later in the year. Tamino is designed to minimize the total cost of ownership, with prices starting at $25,000 per processor. www.softwareagusa.com

IntraNet Solutions, Inc. announced the availability of Xpedio Merge. As an add-on to Xpedio Content Management System, Xpedio Merge features a component-based publishing module for assembling complex publications from a variety of managed source content. Xpedio Merge facilitates dynamic assembly and personalization of complex publications that allows multiple authors to use components managed in the Xpedio Content Server to create Web viewable and printable publications. Applications for this software include sales and marketing materials, personalized training manuals and responses to complex RFPs.

ec-Content, Inc. announced the availability of its MRO content library, and content acquisition, management and maintenance offerings for B2B Net marketplaces, and introduced its Supplier Neutral Content methodology for managing and maintaining value-added content. A provider of comprehensive MRO content with a management and maintenance solution, ec-Content partners with Net marketplaces looking to increase the effectiveness of their online catalogs to attract and retain more buyers. Because no two suppliers, manufacturers or wholesalers collect, maintain and present content in exactly the same way, buyers often find there are many sources for price and product information coming from a single manufacturer or supplier, making it difficult to locate and purchase items. The acquisition and maintenance of electronic catalog content, and the ability to offer item cross-referencing are daunting tasks that require marketplaces to aggregate hundreds of thousands of items with different attributes, from different catalogs. ec-Content removes the burden of these tasks by providing Net marketplaces with access to a centralized content library of 5.2 million items, supporting tens of millions of SKUs, across 40,000 suppliers that can be customized to reflect buyers’ negotiated prices for each supplier. The complex MRO content is cleaned, normalized and standardized, then maintained on a scalable database. By outsourcing content management to ec-Content, buying organizations eliminate the need to track their purchases through hundreds of paper catalogs containing items with different attributes and often outdated pricing. ec-Content’s value-added content includes enhanced product descriptions, images, common identifiers, and current pricing information updated on a regularly scheduled basis. In addition, ec-Content provides quality assurance services including the ongoing tracking of anomalies, discontinued items and pricing changes, that improve Net marketplace content and in turn, makes the marketplace more valuable to its customers. To effectively manage the electronic catalog content needed by Net marketplaces, ec-Content assigns a universal number to each item in their database, and maps that identifier to corresponding supplier part numbers and commodity codes. The solution behind ec-Content’s Supplier Neutral Content is the Content Overlay Process that essentially overlays supplier catalogs that include varying descriptions for identical products. This eliminates the need for Net marketplaces to input multiple product descriptions from multiples suppliers, establishing a scalable process for managing and maintaining customized catalogs. www.eccontent.com