Category: Content technology news (Page 625 of 639)

Eastman Kodak Company today announced that Gerry Sutton has been appointed President of the company’s Eastman Software subsidiary, effective immediately. Sutton will report to Candy Obourn, President of Kodak’s Document Imaging business, with Eastman Software continuing to operate as a subsidiary unit of the company. Sutton replaces Robert Weiler, who had been president of Eastman Software since the unit’s inception in 1997. Weiler will remain a consultant to the business. Kodak will align the subsidiary under the company’s Document Imaging business, the supplier of micrographics and document imaging products and services. Sutton’s most recent assignment was as general manager for Kodak’s Business Imaging Systems worldwide service bureau operations and sales. In addition he has served as general manager for the business in the U.S. and Canada, Europe, Africa and Middle East Regions and has managed the Asia Pacific Regional operations for Eastman Software. www.eastmansoftware.com

Autonomy, Inc. announced the establishment of offices in Washington, D.C. and Boston. Autonomy has named six new hires for marketing and sales: Dan Buan, Darlene G. Hines, Rita Joseph, Mitchell Logan and Julie Hartigan in the Washington, D.C. office and Allyson Miller in the Boston office. The eastern regional division will report directly to Steve Jaffee, director of eastern region, while the federal division reports to Jon Wilks, vice president of sales. Autonomy develops software that automatically organizes large, unstructured volumes of information into personally relevant communications to help corporate intranets and commercial websites serve the changing needs and interests of users. The intelligent pattern recognition technology that fuels Autonomy’s software was originally developed by Autonomy’s sister company, Neurodynamics, for use in intelligence and defense applications. www.autonomy.com

Infoteria Inc. unveiled a new software product named “XML Solution Components.” XML Solution Components is a series of components for building the XML-based solution systems. Using XML Solution Components, the inter-Enterprise XML-based information system, and XML-based e-Commerce internet systems are built easily and rapidly. The first version of XML Solution Components consists of 7 components, iAccess, iHTML, iMessage, iNotes, iOracle, iPad, and iRule. For example, iMessage handles the XML data send via SMTP and retrieves it from the mail box to the XML storage. iHTML generates HTML file from XML data with XSL based style rules, so that the end-users do not require the latest Web browser such as Internet Explorer 5.0 to access to XML-based system. Each component in XML Solution Components can be purchased separately. The components are available as Executables, Windows COM modules and C++ libraries. The components will separately start shipping in May, 1999 to August, 1999. Japanese versions will also be available in addition to the English versions. Infoteria Inc., founded in 1998, is a software company that focuses on XML technology. The company is dedicated to the development of a wide range of practical XML software products from XML access libraries to XML Servers for the purpose of inter-enterprise electronic commerce. www.infoteria.com

Arbortext, Inc., demonstrated a “free-form” XML editing capability that will be available in upcoming releases of Epic and ADEPT products. Content management systems that allow free-form editing enable an author to create and refine XML documents without a corresponding DTD.. Arbortext’s support for free-form editing means Epic and ADEPT users can edit well-formed XML documents as easily as they edit valid XML documents today. The amount of content available in XML is rapidly expanding and users of proprietary tools will be virtually “locked out” of the XML wave because of the huge cost of conversion. With Arbortext’s free-form XML editing capability, no conversion is necessary — authors can instantly read, modify and write well-formed XML data from any source, or incorporate that data into a valid XML document. www.arbortext.com

Hummingbird Communications Ltd and PC DOCS Group International Inc announced they have entered into an agreement pursuant to which Hummingbird would acquire PC DOCS Group. Each outstanding common share of PC DOCS Group will be exchanged for 0.3333 of a common share of Hummingbird. As a result of the transaction, PC DOCS Group will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hummingbird. The transaction values PC DOCS Group at approximately US$155 million, representing a 38% premium for PC DOCS Group shareholders based on the average closing prices of the two companies’ shares over the last ten trading days prior to the announcement of the transaction. Following the completion of the transaction, which is estimated to be during May 1999, PC DOCS Group will become an operating division of Hummingbird, continuing to serve and support its customers in close collaboration with the Hummingbird organization. The Boards of Directors of Hummingbird and PC DOCS Group have each unanimously approved the transaction. Ruby Osten will become Vice Chairman of an expanded seven person board of directors of Hummingbird and will retain his position as President of PC DOCS Group.

Microsoft Corp. has announced Microsoft BizTalk, a new cross-platform e-commerce framework that makes it easy for businesses to integrate applications and conduct business over the Internet with trading partners and customers. The BizTalk framework is based on XML schemas and industry standards that enable integration across industries and between business systems, regardless of platform, operating system or underlying technology. Microsoft also announced plans to incorporate the BizTalk schema into the Microsoft Commerce Platform, initiatives for the MSN network for Internet services, and future versions of Office, the BackOffice family and Windows operating systems. BizTalk makes integrating software in an internal technology environment easier and more cost-effective. Because BizTalk is a cross-platform framework, it allows software to communicate between different common object models, programming languages or shared database schemas. BizTalk is designed to enable the integration of software so that businesses can immediately increase the efficiency of their internal business systems and take advantage of e-commerce while making optimal use of existing investments in hardware and software. Microsoft plans to host a design review of new BizTalk schemas with customers, industry vendors and industry consortia in the second half of 1999. The design review will be an open forum for providing input on the BizTalk framework and will result in the publishing of all current and future BizTalk protocols. All BizTalk documents, message handling protocols and service descriptions will be maintained on the Microsoft Web site as a public resource. For more information about BizTalk, see www.microsoft.com/presspass/commerce/

SAP AG announced that it will work closely with Microsoft Corp. to develop new content specifications for key e-commerce functionality. The collaboration will focus on developing new XML specifications for the SAP Business Framework and Microsoft’s BizTalk framework. The BizTalk framework will provide the foundation for SAP and Microsoft to help accelerate semantic interoperability — a common business language — by providing schemas for catalog and business document interchange between SAP and Microsoft applications. The interchange will be based on the SAP Business Application Programming Interface (BAPI) and the Microsoft COM infrastructure areas, extended by tight integration into the Microsoft BizTalk Server. Both companies will initially focus on the integration of buy- and sell-side business processes and will define XML schemas for catalog and business document interchange between SAP and Microsoft applications within the next six months. The specification that is created will be used to integrate the SAP Business-to-Business Procurement solution and the Microsoft Commerce Server. The newly created XML specification will provide streamlined, accelerated and easy-to-use business processes and eliminate current system boundaries, help companies create more online business, and increase the opportunity to communicate and cooperate with other companies. www.sap.com