Intraspect Software, Inc., announced that R&D Solutions, a major supplier of web integration services in France, has signed a strategic agreement to resell Intraspect products. These include Intraspect Knowledge Server (IKS) 3.0, a platform for developing, deploying, and managing collaborative business solutions. Intraspect and R&D Solutions are targeting major French multinational organizations. R&D has been delivering the full suite of Intraspect c-business services including IKS 3.0, implementation, customization, training, and local support. www.intraspect.com More small U.S. companies should look at France and other European countries. We wouldn’t recommend expansion before you are ready to devote the necessary energy. On the other hand, as Europe continues to accelerate their catching-up with North America in the use of internet technology there will be more and more opportunities lost. European software companies should look at more aggressive growth for the same reason.

OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, welcomed Scott McGrath to its staff in a newly-created position, Member Services Manager. In his new role, McGrath will have responsibility for activity coordination and communication for the more than 130 members of the non-profit international consortium dedicated to XML interoperability. McGrath brings to OASIS more than 10 years experience developing customer service systems and staff, most recently with the world’s second largest member organization, the American Automobile Association. As senior liaison between members, all AAA business units and suppliers/contractors, McGrath served as ombudsman, mediator and conflict resolution expert, supervised mediation and quality measurement staff, executive service call center, and correspondence staff and developed quality tracking, measurement, reporting/organizational learning systems. McGrath also brings a wealth of experience in developing database-driven business systems and service quality assessment/manage

Inso Corporation announced that it has sold its PDM Division for approximately $12 million in cash and net assumption of liabilities. The transaction is in the form of a stock purchase by Structural Dynamics Research Corporation (SDRC) of outstand-ing stock of Inso’s subsidiaries, Sherpa Systems Corporation and Inso France Development. The sale was completed on January 5, 2000 and should result in a transaction loss to Inso estimated at approximately $3 million in the fourth fiscal quarter. In addition, a compensation charge of approximately $1.7 million will be recorded in the fourth fiscal quarter for the cost of option vesting or cancellation for certain PDM Division employees. www.inso.com

Cisco Systems, Inc. announced its membership in the Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) Forum, an industry group focused on enabling the emergence of easily connected Internet devices in home networks. This industry group will define specifications that utilize XML. These specifications will compliment the work being done in the IETF Zero Configuration Working Group by Cisco and other industry leaders. More information about the UPnP Forum can be found at www.upnp.org. More information about the IETF Zero Configuration Working Group can be found at www.ietf.org/html.charters/zeroconf-charter.html, www.cisco.com

Excalibur Technologies announced availability of Excalibur RetrievalWare for FileNET Panagon, along with beta support for Panagon 2000, which it plans to deliver in Q1 2000. Excalibur RetrievalWare for FileNET Panagon IDM (Integrated Document Management) Document Services provides access to all information managed by Panagon as well as a single point of access, or knowledge portal, to all of the organization’s knowledge repositories. It enables end-users to seamlessly and securely search for information in a variety of FileNET document repositories and provides customers with proprietary advanced ranking capabilities to allow searches to be reviewed based on relevance. Using the new system, knowledge workers spend less time looking for and re-creating stored knowledge, and more time creating value for their organizations. In addition, RetrievalWare for Panagon features close integration with the Panagon security model and with the Panagon web browser client to ensure that RetrievalWare will never allow a user to retrieve a document they are not able to view when working inside Panagon. www.excalib.com

IntraNet Solutions announced that it has made a strategic investment in activeIQ Technologies, a technology start-up company that is developing internet commerce communities and knowledge categorization technology. Content characterization technology analyzes the structure of documents and classifies them automatically into an ordered system. This technology can help organizations create Web applications that have Yahoo-like Internet category directories that users can easily search and navigate to locate precise information. www.activeiq.com, www.intranetsolutions.com