Category: Content technology news (Page 281 of 637)

Verity Inc. announced availability of a business process management (BPM) solution with enterprise-class, full-text search for immediate access to time- sensitive content across the entire business process lifecycle. Verity LiquidOffice version 4.0 has built-in capability to search, evaluate and monitor in-process content and other information. The delay to get to crucial information until a business process has run its course and is placed in a data repository is eliminated. Expanded tracking and auditing capabilities log system administrator activities such as changing rights and permissions in the management console as well as every time a user accesses or views form-based content. The Verity BPM solution securely connects all people across the enterprise and geographies with information and processes, whether inside or outside the enterprise firewall. Verity LiquidOffice also includes several new features that optimize designer productivity and accelerate deployment of processes. The Form Designer feature supports Unicode character sets. Verity LiquidOffice version 4.0 is the first BPM solution to result from the company’s acquisition of Cardiff Software and Dralasoft. It is currently available from Verity and its global network of sales partners.

JASTEC Co., a Japanese custom software development and systems integration company, announced that its 100% U.S. subsidiary, JASTEC International Inc., had acquired 100% of the stock of LTU Technologies, the image mining visual search engine software. LTU Technologies will continue to operate as an independent company, with the management team, vertical markets and product development roadmap unchanged. LTU Technologies addresses several vertical markets, including Law Enforcement, Intelligence, Intellectual Property, Corporate search, and online search and filtering. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. http://www.ltutech.com

Adobe Systems Incorporated announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion. The combination of Adobe and Macromedia will provide customers a more powerful set of solutions for creating, managing and delivering content and experiences across multiple operating systems, devices and media. Together, the two companies will meet a wider set of customer needs and have a significantly greater opportunity to grow into new markets, particularly in the mobile and enterprise segments. Under the terms of the agreement, which has been approved by both boards of directors, Macromedia stockholders will receive, at a fixed exchange ratio, 0.69 shares of Adobe common stock for every share of Macromedia common stock in a tax-free exchange. Based on Adobe’s and Macromedia’s closing prices on Friday, April 15, 2005, this represents a price of $41.86 per share of Macromedia common stock. Upon the close of the transaction, Macromedia stockholders will own approximately 18 percent of the combined company on a pro forma basis. In the combined company, Chizen will continue as chief executive officer and Shantanu Narayen will remain president and chief operating officer. Stephen Elop, president and chief executive officer of Macromedia, will join Adobe as president of worldwide field operations. Murray Demo will remain executive vice president and chief financial officer. Dr. John Warnock and Dr. Charles Geschke will remain as co-chairmen of the Board of Directors of the combined company and Rob Burgess, chairman of the Macromedia Board of Directors, will join the Adobe Board. The two companies are developing integration plans that build on the cultural similarities and the best business and product development practices from each company. Adobe also announced its Board of Directors has approved a post-acquisition stock repurchase program of $1 billion. The repurchase program is in addition to the Adobe’s existing stock repurchase programs and is expected to commence following the completion of the acquisition. The repurchases will be funded from available working capital. http://www.adobe.com, http://www.macromedia.com

Digital Harbor announced the availability of Enterprise Designer, a modeling environment for composite applications that combines Enterprise Information Integration (EII), Business Process Integration, and Event Integration in a single graphical environment. A key component of Digital Harbor’s composite application platform, PiiE, Enterprise Designer is a graphical tool that logically links pieces of information from disparate systems as if they were one. Enterprise Designer enables developers and business analysts to use pre-existing models created in ErWin or Rational Rose as a starting point, and leverages the concept of a business ontology to reach across systems to link and relate different types and sources of information in real-time. Enterprise Designer offers a unified environment for development, integration, deployment, and end user interfaces, and supports the Ontology Web Language (OWL) standard, published by the W3C, to describe relationships at a higher logical level of abstraction. The model — or ontology — created using Enterprise Designer can be exported to other OWL-compliant modeling tools, or it can be deployed directly in Digital Harbor’s run-time environment. Enterprise Designer is available now.

Microsoft Corp. and Dassault Systemes announced that they will collaborate to support Microsoft’s Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) format in Dassault Systemes’ 3D XML format. XAML is the format for “Avalon”, the code name of the next presentation subsystem for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Avalon provides the foundation for building applications and high-fidelity experiences, blending together user interfaces, documents and media content while exploiting the full power of users’ computers. Avalon provides native support for declarative, markup-based programming with XAML. 3D XML is a universal, lightweight XML-based format that enables users to capture and share live, accurate 3D data quickly and easily. Dassault Systemes will use the 3D XML format in its entire line of products: CATIA, DELMIA, ENOVIA, SMARTEAM, SolidWorks and Spatial. Compatibility between 3D XML and XAML will enable users of 3D solutions to view, modify and customize 3D objects and take advantage of this 3D experience in any XAML-based application. http://www.3ds.com, http://www.microsoft.com

Ephox launched a major upgrade to its EditLive! EditLive! for XML enables business users to easily create and edit XML content in a simple, browser-based tool and provides developers with an easy to use XML forms development environment. EditLive! for XML is an XML forms solution combining browser-based access, comprehensive rich text authoring capabilities and cross platform support. Version 3.0 also introduces a desktop edition of the forms development environment and a new form solution file format which decreases the amount of effort required to design and deploy XML forms. The EditLive! for XML solution for XML forms makes it possible to combine rich text (graphics, rich text, tables) with strict data types (numbers, dates, plain text) to leverage the best features of forms, documents and spreadsheets. EditLive! for XML also consists of a development environment for XML forms which reduces the costs and complexities of designing and deploying solutions for the contribution and editing of XML content. Evaluation versions are available for download from http://www.ephox.com

Vignette Corp. announced the general availability of Vignette Portal release 7.2. This latest portal release extends Vignette’s personalization, identity management, reporting, collaboration, content management and application integration. Vignette has extended its ability to consume third-party standards-based portlet applications based on the Web Services for Remote Portlets standard (WSRP), whether created in Java or .NET. Vignette Portal release 7.2 includes: Enhanced out-of-the-box search capabilities that allow users to query a wide range of internal and external data sources, including Microsoft Exchange Server, Lotus Notes, relational databases, file systems and Web sites; the ability to derive personalization rules from multiple data sources; the ability to link personalization attributes and mined data from multiple systems across the organization; and integration with Vignette Records and Documents through the use of standards-based JSR-168 portlets. The latest version also advances support for globally distributed portal deployments. Included in this release is the ability to synchronize disparate portal clusters, allowing organizations with multiple portal deployments in separate geographies to maintain their portal installations as a single source across the organization. Vignette Portal also implements an administrative component API that can be used to encapsulate Web applications that plug into the Vignette Portal administrative console. Vignette Portal release 7.2 is shipping and available to customers. Licensing costs for Vignette Portal begin at $75,000 (U.S.). http://www.vignette.com

XyEnterprise announced the availability of the latest releases of its products: Content@ 3.2 XML content management software and XML Professional Publisher (XPP) 7.3 enterprise publishing application. The new releases provide enhanced XML capabilities and build on Content@ and XPP’s Web Services interfaces, editing adapters, and workflow automation features. In addition to standard integration with the latest versions of XML authoring tools, Content@ 3.2 adds support for Oracle 10g, Microsoft Windows 2003 and the Apache Web Server, as well as updates to its Microsoft InfoPath adapter. Content@ 3.2 provides XML schema and namespace support for those editorial tools with this capability. Content@ 3.2 also incorporates the latest version of Verity K2 Developer. This OEM search product for independent software vendors includes search features that enable users to retrieve, categorize and re-use information based on content, XML attributes (e.g., tags or metadata) or both. XML Professional Publisher 7.3 supports Microsoft Windows 2003 servers and XP clients. XPP 7.3 features several enhancements to its XyView editing interface that enable users to more efficiently handle structured content. The latest release also adds enhanced XML schema and Xpath support, as well as a new integration for MathML editing using the Design Science MathFlow Editor. XPP 7.3 includes a long list of specific enhancements requested by XPP customers.