Category: Marketing & e-commerce (Page 52 of 77)

Vitria Technology announced the availability of a new integration solution for EDI. Companies can now use Vitria’s leading ebusiness platform, BusinessWare, to transparently access information and transactions managed by EDI-enabled business systems. BusinessWare’s EDI solution enables customers to automate core business processes — such as order management or inventory replenishment — that integrate EDI systems with other internal enterprise applications, and with external EDI and XML-enabled trading partner systems, with equal ease. BusinessWare converts EDI transactions to and from standard EDI formats, enabling those transactions to be shared with any other system inside or outside the firewall. As companies place greater emphasis on supply and demand chain automation, there is a need to manage key business processes across trading partners regardless of enabling technology. With comprehensive support for EDI and XML-based ebusiness, EDI Solution provides a graceful migration path for companies augmenting or replacing EDI with newer, XML-based B2B integration technologies over time, such as ebXML, BizTalk, and cXML. Vitria’s new EDI solution is available immediately. www.vitria.com

SilverStream Software, Inc. released its updated eBusiness Platform. The Java and XML-based SilverStream eBusiness Platform includes: SilverStream ePortal 2.0 – An integrated offering comprised of an application framework, business components, and underlying eBusiness services for delivering Internet applications; Enhanced business manager tool suite; Personalization; A new workflow engine; Enhanced content management capabilities; SilverStream xCommerce 2.0 – Am XML-enabling service that allows Internet applications to access mainframes and external business systems; Enhanced support of J2EE standards; Enterprise Enablers for IBM 3270, 5250 and CICS; and SilverStream Application Server 3.7. Customers can combine elements of the SilverStream eBusiness Platform for a comprehensive integrated solution, or deploy separate products that integrate flexibly into any enterprise architectures. Web services created in xCommerce are deployed to open, standards-based J2EE application servers running on Windows NT and Unix. In addition to supporting the SilverStream Application Server, xCommerce 2.0 now supports IBM’s WebSphere. Additionally, SilverStream supports RosettaNet, OAG, ebXML, cXML, xCBL, ACORD, tpaML and SOAP. www.silverstream.com

SoftLock.com, Inc. announced Version 3.0 of its digital rights management (DRM) service. Version 3.0 offers digital content providers a highly scalable solution for the distribution of secure digital content. The widespread use of XML as a core technology in Version 3.0 allows content providers to easily integrate their business and e-commerce services with SoftLock’s content hosting, security, and marketing services. SoftLock’s Dynamic Content Locking, a key feature of Version 3.0, enables digital content to be packaged, secured and distributed in real-time. Dynamic Content Locking is an innovative approach to DRM, which allows consumers to order digital documents that are customized to their interests, packaged on the fly and delivered within seconds. This technology allows content providers to focus on maintaining their content database rather than on the production and distribution of the final packaged product. Version 3.0 enables digital content marketing through integration points that deliver content offers to consumers through affiliate retailers, search engines, registration and contextual mapping. DCM provides the tools to market, distribute and sell premium digital content securely, through a comprehensive network of innovative technology, services and partners. Another feature of Version 3.0 is an enhanced rendition of SoftLock’s Passalong viral marketing technology. Passalong, an integral part of SoftLock’s digital content marketing offering encourages sharing amount colleagues and friends, while the content’s copyright security wrapper remains intact. Content publishers encourage the use of Passalong because it results in additional sales while reducing customer acquisition costs. www.softlock.com

VCIX introduced ObjectXplorer, a graphical user interface for its Cortra Site Studio software. The uniqueness of ObjectXplorer lies in its object-oriented approach to the editing and management of web-based content. Articles, photographs, multimedia presentations, and other industry formats for web publishing are managed as flexible objects using ObjectXplorer. In addition to greatly simplifying the task of editors and website designers, ObjectXplorer makes it unnecessary to develop new and separate GUI’s for each individual project. ObjectXplorer not only speeds development time but also enables VCIX to provide customers with a single user interface for all of the web-based applications that Cortra currently provides: a portal manager, a classified ad manager, a digital asset manager, an intranet, an extranet and an e-commerce application for integration with on-line shops and stores. Cortra Site Studio enables non-technical staff to control all aspects of a web site’s content management, without the need for programmers or skilled technicians. A wide range of objects including text, images, and streaming media can be easily published, archived, scheduled, and managed, thereby producing a dynamic, robust, and scalable site that is easy to maintain and to adapt to changing business requirements. The Cortra software includes built-in support for XML. www.vcix.com

worldweb.net, Inc. and IBM Global Services (IGS) announce a partnership in which IGS will bundle Expressroom I/O into its e-Commerce for Retail solution. IBM’s e-Commerce for Retail solution is a bundled software, hardware, and services solution designed to provide a full-function, production-ready, e-Commerce web site to customers who desire an efficient, scaleable, and reliable e-Commerce presence. This solution provides the essential elements of a retail e-Commerce application, enabling a customer to quickly implement a functional site using a combination of technologies. Expressroom I/O will be used with WebSphere and WebSphere Commerce, as a core component of IBM’s e-Commerce for Retail solution. Within this framework, customers will be able to easily create, manage, deploy, and deliver their content in one complete e-Commerce solution. Content is seen as an essential component of this offering, and worldweb.net’s Expressroom I/O is the chosen solution to meet the demanding content management needs of the IBM Global Services e-Commerce for Retail customers. www.worldweb.net, www.ibm.com

RioLabs Inc. announced the availability of RioTrade 2.0, a solution that enables rapid integration of suppliers into e-marketplaces. RioTrade 2.0 allows faster time-to-market for suppliers who need to rapidly integrate with e-marketplaces of their choice, and with online buyers. RioTrade’s technology uses a virtual file system that links enterprise information sources with applications through a graphical interface — without writing any code. Version 2.0 includes: Commerce One xCBL support, Ariba cXML support, SAP support, EDI support with pre-built XML-EDI maps, Windows 2000 Datacenter Server support, and 3-5 day implementation. RioLabs’ offering helps e-marketplaces deliver on the promise of B2B e-commerce by quickly enabling the supply side of the equation. RioTrade quickly enables companies who want to establish electronic trading relationships with business partners by mapping disparate enterprise systems to XML-based transactions. This technology offers customers performance, reliability and scalability for automated transactions. RioTrade 2.0 includes support for existing EDI systems, allowing suppliers to maximize existing EDI investments. It handles all EDI formats, including ANSI X12 and EDIFACT. RioLabs also supports EDI applications such as TIE Commerce, GE Global Exchange Services, Sterling Commerce, Peregrine Systems and Compaq-DEC. www.riolabs.com

Enigma, Inc. introduced CommerceSight 2.0, the second release of its B2B software platform for aftermarket sales and support of capital equipment. By providing rich product content as context for aftermarket purchasing and maintenance decisions, CommerceSight 2.0 allows manufacturers to increase follow-on sales of spare parts and services, while equipment operators benefit from higher equipment uptime and greater purchasing and maintenance productivity. Enigma’s solution addresses the problem of rich-content collaboration that manufacturers with complex products sold and supported through complex channels currently face. The CommerceSight engine provides the core content delivery services for channel management and technical support applications and can be integrated with transaction and EAI applications for complete e-commerce solutions. CommerceSight 2.0 automatically packages multiple text, graphic and relational data sources into portable XML-based applications that can be dynamically delivered to Web sites, intranets, third-party applications and offline media. CommerceSight 2.0 is a unified, open standards-based B2B transactive content platform. It is comprised of several key components: Enigma’s InSight and DynaWeb solutions, enabling content delivery for complex maintenance manuals and other text-intensive, high-volume product content; eIPC, an intelligent product catalog that links technical illustrations, parts lists and related text information and provides shopping cart functionality; Enigma’s Xtend, a buy-side solution that allows equipment operators to seamlessly integrate best practices and policies information into manufacturer-originated product content behind their corporate firewalls; Connectors to ERP, order management and e-procurement systems that shorten the aftermarket sales cycle by providing context for purchasing decisions; and Connectors to document management and product data management systems that enable full automation of content assembly and delivery and full integration across disparate repositories and data formats. CommerceSight 2.0 is available now. Pricing begins at $150,000. www.enigma.com

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has issued XML Schema as a W3C Candidate Recommendation. Advancement of the document to Candidate Recommendation is an invitation to the Web development community at large to make implementations of XML Schema and provide technical feedback. Simply defined, XML Schemas define shared markup vocabularies and allow machines to carry out rules made by people. They provide a means for defining the structure, content and semantics of XML documents. The XML Schema specification consists of three parts. One part defines a set of simple datatypes, which can be associated with XML element types and attributes; this allows XML software to do a better job of managing dates, numbers, and other special forms of information. The second part of the specification proposes methods for describing the structure and constraining the contents of XML documents, and defines the rules governing schema-validation of documents. The third part is a primer, which explains what schemas are, how they differ from DTDs, and how someone builds a schema. By bringing datatypes to XML, XML Schema increases XML’s power and utility to the developers of electronic commerce systems, database authors and anyone interested in using and manipulating large volumes of data on the Web. By providing better integration with XML Namespaces, it makes it easier than it has ever been to define the elements and attributes in a namespace, and to validate documents which use multiple namespaces defined by different schemas. XML Schema introduces new levels of flexibility that may accelerate the adoption of XML for significant industrial use. For example, a schema author can build a schema that borrows from a previous schema, but overrides it where new unique features are needed. XML Schema also provides a way for users of e-commerce systems to choose which XML Schema they use to validate elements in a given namespace, thus providing better assurance in e-commerce transactions and greater security against unauthorized changes to validation rules. The working group members include: Academia Sinica; ArborText, Inc; Bootstrap Alliance and LSU; Calico Commerce; Commerce One; Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA); DevelopMentor; Distributed Systems Technology Centre (DSTC Pty Ltd); Graphic Communications Association; Health Level Seven; Hewlett Packard Company; IBM; Informix; Intel; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Lexica LLC; Lotus Development Corporation; Microsoft Corporation; Microstar; MITRE; NCR; Oracle Corp.; Progress Software; SAP AG; Software AG; Sun Microsystems; TIBCO Software; University of Edinburgh; webMethods, Inc; Xerox; and XMLSolutions. www.w3.org