Microsoft Corp. and Ericsson announced a strategic partnership to develop and market end-to-end solutions for the wireless Internet, based on a shared vision of convenient and fast access to information anytime, anywhere, from any device. Ericsson and Microsoft will form a joint company to market and deliver mobile e-mail solutions for network operators. Ericsson will own the majority share of the new company. As part of the partnership – the first between the two companies – Ericsson will provide its WAP stack to Microsoft and will adopt Microsoft Mobile Explorer for feature phones. The joint company will focus on building, marketing and deploying solutions that utilize Microsoft Windows NT Server and Exchange platforms, and Ericsson’s infrastructure and mobile Internet technologies. Microsoft and Ericsson also agreed to collaborate in their support of developing open industry standards – including Universal Plug and Play (UPnP), WAP and Bluetooth. The new dual-mode microbrowser displays both HTML and WAP 1.1-compliant content, thus eliminating the need for operators and developers to choose between technologies. Microsoft Mobile Explorer is a modular mobile phone platform for enabling secure corporate data access, e-mail, Internet, location-based services and electronic commerce from feature phones and smart phones. www.ericsson.se/pressroom, www.microsoft.com/presspass/
Category: Content technology news (Page 548 of 638)
Curated information technology news for content technology, computing, and digital experience professionals. News items are edited to remove hype, unhelpful jargon, iffy statements, and quotes, to create a short summary — mostly limited to 200 words — of the important facts with a link back to a useful source for more information. News items are published using the date of the original source here and in our weekly email newsletter.
We focus on product news, but also include selected company news such as mergers and acquisitions and meaningful partnerships. All news items are edited by one of our analysts under the NewsShark byline. See our Editorial Policy.
Note that we also publish news on X/Twitter. Follow us @gilbane
Intuit Inc. and Microsoft Corporation announced proposed additions to the next version of the Open Financial Exchange (OFX) specification. The new features would include 401(k) extensions, 1099 capability and transfers between brokerage accounts. In addition, the companies are proposing XML compliance in version 2.0 and intend to make the new version backward compatible with OFX 1.0.2, OFX 1.5.1 and OFX 1.6, the versions widely used by financial services companies today. Finally, Intuit and Microsoft have indicated that they will propose adding insurance data and transactions in subsequent versions of OFX. Intuit and Microsoft are actively engaged with the Interactive Financial Exchange (IFX) Working Group to support the creation and rollout of the IFX standard. At whatever point IFX becomes established and a certification process exists for high-quality implementations, Intuit and Microsoft plan to work closely with the IFX Working Group to create a migration path for existing OFX Solution Providers and to preserve the existing investment in OFX by these companies. This will be important as the number of financial institutions and technology providers that use OFX continues to grow, because OFX is here now, it works, and these companies have relied on OFX to bring their online financial services offerings to market quickly. Intuit is drafting the proposed 2.0 specification and will submit it to Microsoft and CheckFree for their review and input. Together, the three companies develop and maintain the OFX specification. Intuit is targeting release of the specification in Q1 2000. www.intuit.com, www.microsoft.com
webMethods, Inc. and KPMG LLP announced a joint software and services solution for implementing B2B e-commerce initiatives based on the RosettaNet standards. RosettaNet’s primary goal is to streamline the information technology supply chain and to improve the flow of critical information allowing information technology supply chain partners to fully leverage e-commerce applications and the Internet as a B2B e-commerce tool. This joint offering is specifically designed to address the needs of RosettaNet’s key constituents
Versant Corporation announced enhancements to its suite of software products for Enterprise Java Bean (EJB) compliant development environments, plus an early developer release of the Versant XML (VXML) Toolkit. VEC 2.1 now supports IBM’s WebSphere 3.0, IBM’s most current family of application servers. Versant’s early developer release of the VXML toolkit allows Versant’s ODBMS product to be used in applications based on emerging Internet corporate data interchange standard, XML. The VXML toolkit allows XML content to be cached in the middle-tier as objects, thereby leveraging Versant’s ODBMS product as a platform for transactional, fault-tolerant eBusiness applications. WebSphere 3.0 Advanced Edition brings improved deployment of EJB technology, application-level security for EJBs, and the IBM SecureWay Directory, which provides LDAP availability to other LDAP-enabled directories. WebSphere 3.0 also includes advanced XML support, to enable easier, standardized exchange of data between multiple web sites. VXML toolkit includes the XML parser, XSLT for content translation, XML/object mapping tools and APIs. VXML is available from the Versant web site as an early developer release. Commercial availability is scheduled for Q1 2000. www.versant.com
Intraspect Software, Inc announced that tSA Consulting Group has agreed to a strategic alliance to resell Intraspect Knowledge Server 3.0. tSA’s major objective is to provide their customers with intelligent E-Business solutions that enable information sharing and collaboration among knowledge workers. IKS integrates with tSA’s existing infrastructure, and also enhances the Microsoft desktop, by providing collaborative knowledge management capabilities that integrate with and leverage Microsoft technology. www.intraspect.com
Reuters is to introduce NewsML to present its news services. NewsML is an open standards-based format for the creation, transfer and delivery of news. It is based on the XML. Reuters has taken the initiative in the creation and adoption of NewsML through the International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC). The IPTC recently established a programme, IPTC 2000, which will deliver a single XML-based format for managing news production. An increasing number of Reuters subscribers are establishing themselves on the Internet and requesting delivery in XML. www.reuters.com
SoftQuad Software Inc. announced the signing of five new XMetaL channel agreements – AGRA Systems Limited, American Computer Innovators Inc., Datalogics Inc., Movement, Inc. and Software AG – that add to SoftQuad’s network of over 70 VARs and OEMs in 13 countries. XMetaL has a familiar word processor-like environment, which makes it a broadly deployable solution that reduces training and implementation costs. XMetaL can increase performance, productivity and stability for users of all skill levels, while giving developers additional tools and functionality to create a more intuitive and integrated XML authoring environment. www.softquad.com
Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced the availability of the Java API for XML Parsing Optional Package (“JAXP” ), and the formation of an expert group for the XML Data Binding project. The expert group for this project, which is going through the Java Community Process, consists of Allaire, Ariba, BEA/Web Logic, Bluestone Software, AOL/Netscape, Extensibility, Fujitsu, IBM, Object Design, Oracle, webMethods and Sun Microsystems. Sun’s announcement of the Java technologies for XML provides universal application logic that complements XML. The Java 2 platform and XML are complementary technologies that each have common features critical for Web-based applications, including platform-independence, industry standards, extensible, reusable, and global language support. Together, the Java 2 platform and XML will allow enterprises to simplify and lower the cost of information sharing and exchange in Web applications. The JAXP Optional Package allows developers to easily build Java-based applications enabled by XML for e-commerce, enterprise application integration, and web publishing. An optional package is a standard Java API that is not part of the Java Runtime Environment but can be optionally added depending on specific application needs. JAXP is now in early access release and available free-of-charge at http://java.sun.com/xml. The final version of JAXP is scheduled to ship in the first quarter of 2000. The JAXP optional package provides basic functionality for reading, manipulating, and generating XML documents through pure Java APIs. Seamlessly integrated with the Java 2 platform, JAXP provides a standard way for a Java platform-based application to plug in any XML-conformant parser. While the reference implementation uses Sun’s experimental high performing Java Project X as its default XML parser, the software’s pluggable architecture allows any XML- conformant parser to be used, such as the xml.apache.org XML parser, code named Xerces. (For information on this community project to which Sun donated technology visit www.apache.org) Sun also announced the expert group of industry leaders within the JCP that is working to create XML Data Binding software for the Java 2 platform. This project, code-named Project Adelard, will enable developers to deliver and maintain high-performance XML-enabled applications with a minimum of development effort. Project Adelard provides a two-way mapping between XML documents and Java-based objects along with a schema compiler tool. The compiler will automatically generate Java classes from XML schemas without requiring developers to write any complex parsing code. In addition, the compiler will contain automatic error and validity of checking of XML messages, helping to ensure that only valid, error-free messages are accepted and processed by a system. As with JAXP, Project Adelard is being developed through the JCP. Sun is working with the W3C XML Schema Group and other standards consortia, such as OASIS and XML.org. The specification and reference implementation for Project Adelard are under development by the expert group. Project Adelard will be available during the second quarter of 2000. www.sun.com
Subscribe to the Gilbane Advisor
