IBM and Rational Software Corporation announced a strategic alliance to jointly develop and market software that will help customers accelerate the development and deployment of e-business applications. Through joint development, IBM and Rational will provide solutions that support the entire application development process to provide business process modeling, business requirements definition, visual modeling, code generation, configuration management, defect tracking, testing, deployment and systems management with tools optimized for every role on the development team. IBM and Rational are developing a roadmap to more closely integrate Rational Suite with software from the IBM Application Framework for e-business. The first result of this partnership is a new integration between IBM’s VisualAge integrated development environment and Rational Suite. This new integration is a standards-based XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) bridge between IBM’s VisualAge for Java and Rational Rose, a key product in Rational Suite. This enables full round-trip engineering between VisualAge for Java and Rational Rose, providing generation of Java code from models and models from Java. The integration is delivered as an add-in to VisualAge for Java and will be available for download on June 30, from IBM’s VisualAge Developer resource site, VisualAge Developer Domain at www.software.ibm.com/vadd to registered users. www.rational.com

Inso Corporation launched eBusiness Technologies, a division focused on helping mid-to-large- sized organizations achieve their e-business goals. Previously known as the Content Management and Internet Publishing Division, eBusiness Technologies develops and markets solutions and services explicitly designed to enable organizations to create high value and strategic e-business applications. eBusiness Technologies offers its customers DynaBase, the XML object-based platform for automated Web content management and personalized dynamic delivery, and MediaBank, the industry-leading media asset management system. With these applications, eBusiness Technologies provides organizations with the foremost e-business solutions on the market. The mission of eBusiness Technologies is to develop and deliver products, tools, services and best practices that create a trusted environment for controlling on-line information assets, automating production and enabling personalized delivery of content via the Internet. Specifically, these solutions utilize an Internet-based framework that facilitates the on-line creation, accumulation, organization, updating, publication and archiving of all types of information affecting day-to-day operations. www.ebt.com.

Lernout & Hauspie announced it purchased all the stock of the Brussels Translation Group (BTG), a private organization that invested in the development of L&H’s iTranslator services, a family of Internet and Intranet translation solutions. L&H’s iTranslator allows fast translation over the Internet and Intranet using a combination of computer programs and human post editing in a multitude of language pairs (currently 14). The purchase, made for approximately $42 million in cash and the assumption of $17 million in debt, will enable L&H to capture all revenues and profits from the sales of L&H iTranslator. L&H expects the transaction to be dilutive for 1999 and accretive in the year 2000. L&H does not anticipate any write-off of in process research & development. L&H announced in March of this year availability of the L&H iTranslator to ISPs, portals and over corporate Intranets. The new L&H iTranslator offerings leverage the Internet’s fast, simple delivery and communications capabilities to provide more easily accessible, affordable translation to a broader range of users than those who have traditionally purchased L&H translation services. www.lhsl.com.

Miva Corporation announced that it has signed site license agreements with Verio, SimpleNet and OLM. The arrangement enables each hosting company’s’ Web servers with Miva Empresa, an application engine designed to empower individual users with Miva Script for the creation and deployment of e-commerce applications and data-driven Web sites. Miva Script is a server-side, XML-based scripting language. Miva Script allows individuals to create and deploy commerce applications, data-driven Web sites and corporate Intranet applications. The scripting language gives Web hosting customers access to advanced commerce and database features in a familiar environment that consists of HTML-like tags. Because Miva Script uses tag-based syntax in the active document, HTML users can easily build cross platform, active, server-side applications without the burden of in-depth training and support. All Miva application products are written in Miva Script. The function-orientated Miva Script language has been defined using an XML DTD and implements programming features, database access, Internet protocol integration and commerce processing interfaces. www.miva.com, www.verio.com, www.simplenet.com, www.olm.com

Online System Services, Inc. announced it will change its name to Webb Interactive Services, Inc. The name change is subject to approval by the company’s shareholders at the annual shareholder meeting set for early August. The company also announced the appointment of Perry Evans, founder of recently acquired netIgnite, as President of the newly combined organization. The new name and organizational changes reflect the complete integration of netIgnite, a start-up company acquired by Online System Services in March 1999. netIgnite has been developing an XML-based commerce-publishing platform, focused on next generation approaches to local online advertising and e-commerce. www.webb.net

STEP GmbH is pleased to announce the formation of a new company based in the UK. The company will be based in Swindon and starts operations on July 1, 1999. The name of the new company has not yet been finally decided, but it will reflect the fact that all the employees of the new STEP company come from the former DPSL (Database Publishing Systems Limited). STEP deeply regrets that DPSL has ceased business due to unfortunate circumstances and been forced to lay off all its staff. For many years DPSL has been the UK center of excellence in the SGML/XML industry, and the UK STEP operation intents to take over this mantle. Its core business will be SGML/XML based consulting, DTD design, software services and system integration, as well as providing services, training and support for all major SGML/XML tools and last but not least being a premium SigmaLink service provider. The highly skilled and experienced personnel will be able to deliver services tothe market from day 1, since it is an existing team since years that enjoys great esteem in the market. The STEP Group is proud to have won the confidence of the former DPSL employees and to have become what is probably Europe’s largest player in the SGML/XML area, with over 90 employees. As part of Bertelsmann Industrial Services the STEP Group has a strong backbone for long-term business relationships with its customers. www.step.de

Extensibility announced the release of XML Authority 1.0, a comprehensive XML schema authoring and conversion tool that enables Web developers to migrate existing data structures to the Internet via XML. This capability accelerates the creation of XML-based industry, corporate and application grammars for the Internet. XML Authority 1.0 converts ODBC data structures, Java classes, COM objects, LDAP schemas, DTD’s and XML documents to all major XML schema formats. XML schema syntax output support includes DTD’s, XML-Data (IE5 level), the XML Schema Definition Language (XSDL), DCD’s, and DDML. XML Authority 1.0 features a graphical user interface that allows users to import or create XML schemas, and view document elements, attributes, entities and other objects in a hierarchical tree. Graphical representation of the document structure also is provided. Collaborative schema development, within and between organizations is enhanced with audience-specific notes and change logging support. XML Authority facilitates the convergence of diverse forms and sources of Internet content. Advanced XML schema features, such as data-typing, enable data-intensive applications to move to XML now. XML Authority provides the ability to adapt SGML DTD’s to those constructs available in XML. XML Authority 1.0 is available for downloading now at www.extensibility.com. XML Authority is $99.95, multiple user x-Packs are available: 5-user, $449.95; 10-user, $849.95; 50-user, $3,995.00. A ten use trial version may also be downloaded from the Extensibility site.