Lotus Development Corp. announced the posting of Domino.Doc 2.5 beta to the Lotus Web site. The Domino.Doc 2.5 release is highlighted by compatibility with Lotus Notes and Domino R5 as well as improved performance, scalability, usability and administration. In addition to working with R5, following are some of the major features and enhancements in Domino.Doc 2.5: Support for multiple Domino.Doc libraries on one Domino server; Partitioned server support and cross domain replication; A new query-by-form capability; And additional e-mail integration; Domino.Doc’s administrator can now create file cabinet templates each with specific parameters, and global profile fields that can be used across all document types in a given file cabinet. www.lotus.com/dominodoc
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Intershop announced its partnership in the SAP mySAP.com business-to-business e-commerce portal. Other partners in mySAP.com announced by SAP are IBM, Pandesic, and Microsoft. Hosting directories, information services and industry-specific content and services, mySAP.com is the Internet business strategy that creates collaborative markets and facilitates dynamic business relationships through industry business yellow pages, online catalogs and e-commerce for more than 10 million users and many partner organizations. Intershop software adds fully automated business-to-business procurement to mySAP.com by connecting purchase managers who use SAP software with suppliers, who offer products and services on the Internet. Sellers are not required to use SAP R/3 standard software. Intershop e-commerce applications integrate with most legacy and ERP systems such as SAP R/3, Oracle Applications, Sage KHK, Baan, JD Edwards and Peoplesoft. Intershop embraces the new XML data exchange format that is expected to replace the old EDI standard. Using XML technology, Intershop’s back-office will connect to the SAP material management application, allowing order information to pass directly from the system of the buyer to the seller. www.intershop.com
Vignette Corporation announced that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Diffusion Inc., The acquisition adds an important component in broadening the capability of Vignette’s StoryServer technology by enabling companies to exchange information with their customers through any preferred media, including Web, e-mail, fax, telephone and pager. The result is closed-loop communications between companies and their customers leading to increased customer satisfaction and improved returns on companies’ online investments. Vignette will acquire 100 percent of the outstanding stock and assume all stock options of Diffusion in exchange for approximately 400,000 shares of Vignette common stock. Vignette will account for the transaction using purchase accounting and expects to close the acquisition by June 30, 1999, subject to approval by the shareholders of Diffusion and other customary closing conditions. Vignette expects to incur one-time acquisition costs and integration related charges associated with the transaction which include costs associated with product integration, cross training, and other merger related costs. Additionally, Vignette anticipates a portion of the purchase price will be allocated to In Process Research and Development and expensed upon the consummation of the transaction. Diffusion technology will enable Vignette customers to manage the distribution and delivery of personalized information across any delivery channel, including the Web, e-mail, fax, pager and telephone, regardless of the channel the communication originates from or is routed through. The result is multi-channel information delivery solutions for automating personalized, closed-loop interaction between an enterprise and its client. For example, through this integration, a financial services company could immediately and proactively alert a client, via the client’s preferred method, when trading events, such as confirmation of block trades, buy/sell decisions, IPO filings and stock price changes. If the customer cannot be reached through the primary channel, the communication will be escalated to the next level, until the customer receives the message. The company then receives confirmation of delivery, an additional benefit in mission-critical business situations. www.vignette.com
Cloudscape, Inc, announced that Capella Computers Ltd., has selected the award-winning, Cloudscape database for PubliShare. Capella’s PubliShare is an authoring and publishing solution for eBusiness. When combined with the Cloudscape database, PubliShare enables the creation of highly portable applications that can easily retrieve and present content for eBusiness catalogs and multimedia solutions in real time. The new version of PubliShare that includes the Cloudscape database will be available through Capella and its distribution channels in the fourth quarter of 1999.Using the Cloudscape database, Capella can offer customers the latest electronic catalog information through the Internet, regardless of the platform. With the Cloudscape data management solution, Capella can deploy, maintain, and refresh its eBusiness publishing solution to a vast number of computing infrastructures outside of their domain. www.cloudscape.com
IntraActive Software Corp. announced that it would unveil ActiveForum 2.0 at Microsoft Tech-Ed ’99. ActiveForum is a community-building platform that enables developers to quickly and easily add threaded discussion forums to their Web applications. ActiveForum is based on software component technologies and designed to support open Internet standards. The out-of-the-box, high performance solution gives developers complete freedom in controlling the look and feel of the site. This enables developers to leverage the distinct visual identity of their web sites in their discussion forums. Based on server side Java and XML technologies, ActiveForum features a rich detailed object API, providing developers with full access to all forums, messages and user attributes. This allows developers to pick and choose the storage medium from relational databases to news servers to file systems. The COM components also take advantage of the advanced object management and transaction services provided by Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) for exceptional performance, scalability and reliability. As a result, ActiveForum can support an unlimited number of messages, forums and users. www.iasoft.com
DataChannel announced the next-generation of its Solution Software for Enterprise Information Portals (EIP). DataChannel has developed its enhanced EIP application server based entirely on XML. The server includes XPages, an implementation of a transformation engine that converts data from heterogeneous sources into XML-ready schema. This transformation engine directly addresses the challenges of data interoperability across and beyond the Enterprise. This data may span unstructured data sources like documents, spreadsheets, and web content, as well as structured data sources like databases, legacy systems, and customized mission critical applications. The addition of XPages offers a dynamic application environment that allows users to combine information from disparate sources into a single presentation on the desktop and interact with the data by updating the back-end systems. Once the data is transformed using XPages, it is ready for web delivery to any audience anywhere. www.datachannel.com
Object Design, Inc. announced ObjectStore 6.0, the newest release of the company’s data management system. ObjectStore 6.0 offers a broad range of new features that result in unprecedented scalability and performance for large-scale Java and Internet electronic business (e-business) applications. In addition to its traditional database deployment capabilities, ObjectStore 6.0 includes a variety of new features to support deployment as a data server, where it is used in the middle tier of multitier applications to “re-stage” enterprise data in formats compatible with Java, C++ and Web applications. ObjectStore 6.0 includes: New Java data management capabilities; Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) Integration; And higher Performance and Scalability. ObjectStore 6.0 is available now. Pricing begins at $4,500. ObjectStore supports Windows 98, Windows NT and all major Unix operating environments. www.objectdesign.com
Microsoft Corp. and Ariba Inc., announced plans to work together to accelerate the adoption of XML-based standards for e-commerce. The companies will join together to integrate Commerce XML (cXML), an emerging standard for business-to-business e-commerce, with the Microsoft BizTalk framework to define schema for communicating operating resource transactions, such as catalogs and orders. In addition to collaborating on BizTalk and cXML, Ariba and Microsoft plan to work together to implement these e-commerce frameworks into products offered by both companies. Ariba will support the BizTalk framework in Ariba e-commerce solutions, and Microsoft will integrate support for cXML into upcoming releases of the Microsoft Commerce Server and BizTalk Server. This collaboration will enable integration between Ariba e-commerce solutions and the multitude of supplier Web sites based on the Microsoft commerce platform. The joint work will provide the opportunity for Microsoft and Ariba customers to more easily and efficiently conduct business-to-business e-commerce with business partners worldwide. As a member of the core group of organizations that will drive the development of BizTalk, Ariba plans to collaborate with Microsoft on the continued development of operating resource transaction cXML schema. Under the planned development, Ariba will use XML-Data Reduced (XDR), the preferred syntax for BizTalk, in the next version of cXML. www.microsoft.com, www.ariba.com
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