Category: Marketing & e-commerce (Page 54 of 77)

IBM and Vignette Corp. announced a global strategic alliance to meet growing e-marketplace demands in retail, financial and NetGen (dotcom) sectors. The alliance integrates Vignette’s V/5 E-business applications with IBM’s WebSphere e-business platform. Together, the two companies will supply customers with e-business solutions that grow market share, reduce deployment times and provide the infrastructure for each stage of e-business development. The integration will enhance the family of WebSphere products, including WebSphere Commerce Suite and WebSphere Application Server, which currently provide a fully integrated middleware solution. The multi-year agreement includes joint marketing, services and helping Vignette to integrate on WebSphere Application Server. IBM and Vignette’s initial focus will be in the retail, financial and “Netgen” (dot.com) industries, and both plan to expand to other industries in the coming months. The two organizations will jointly market Vignette V/5 E-business applications and the IBM WebSphere Application Server Platform, WebSphere Commerce Suite, IBM’s DB2 Universal Database and are optimized for IBM’s RS/6000 and Netfinity servers. Dedicated engineering, product marketing and quality assurance teams will manage the integration and optimization of the entire integrated e-business solution. The Vignette V/5 E-business applications will fully support the IBM Application Framework for e-business – a roadmap for integrating Internet technologies with traditional information technologies. In addition, IBM Global Services will grow its worldwide services practice focusing on Vignette V/5’s support of eCRM and e-commerce from 100 IBM services professionals to in excess of 500. Prospective customers will be able to visit IBM’s Business Innovation Centers that will feature Vignette V/5 E-business applications. IBM experts in Vignette products will help customers identify, build, integrate, and deploy solutions that meet their specific business needs. The IBM ‘ Vignette alliance is part of a developer initiative through PartnerWorld for Developers in which IBM forms strategic relationships with application developers. Under the initiative, developers gain access to new customers and revenue opportunities through IBM’s extensive marketing, sales, and solutions resources. At the same time, developers lead with IBM’s middleware, server platforms and services. www.ibm.com, www.vignette.com

Vertical Computer Systems Inc. announced the official beta release of two of its MLE (Markup Language Executive) Solutions Suite products: the XML Catalog Enabler Agent and the XML Database Agent. The XML Catalog Enabler Agent is directed toward B2B e-commerce applications, and the XML Database Agent is directed mainly toward internal operations of organizations. Both products enable advanced interoperability in B2B, B2G and B2C e-commerce. They are server-based tools that allow data to be fetched from an SQL relational database via http. Both work on Windows NT, Windows 2000 and Linux. The XML Catalog Enabler Agent will enable vendors to enter the e-procurement business quickly via XML. The general availability for these two products is scheduled for Sept. 30, 2000. www.vcsy.com

Nextron, Inc. announced the availability of Nextron Phase 4, the newest version of its Web content management platform for creating, editing and managing large numbers of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) Web sites. The company also announced the availability of Nextron Applications, a family of e-business applications powered by Nextron Phase 4 that deliver low-cost e-commerce, e-marketing, and mobile business solutions for SMEs worldwide. Nextron Phase 4 and Nextron Applications are tightly integrated and packaged with high-touch professional services from Nextron to deliver a complete e-business solution to the SME marketplace. Nextron sells its products and services to global partners — including carriers, directory publishers (Internet, wireless and print), Internet and Application Service Providers, franchises and multinational corporations — that serve the SME market. Nextron’s global partners integrate the Phase 4 platform into their Internet infrastructure to deliver low-cost, easy-to-use Internet and wireless solutions to their SME customers. Nextron Phase 4 (formerly “ICAS”) is a software platform optimized for addressing the enormous size and demographic complexity of the SME global market. Nextron Phase 4 runs on Solaris servers and Oracle databases, supports multiple languages and currencies, and delivers design, administration and management functionality. Today Nextron also announced that it acquired ImpulseSale.com, a leader in location-based mobile applications, which will allow Nextron to develop and deliver mobile commerce applications for the SME market. Nextron plans to announce the availability of its first mobile application, code-named “Neo,” later this fall. www.nextron.com

Forecross Corporation announced the release of its L2X SmartXML Suite of software products and services to provide legacy to web data exchange without middleware. SmartXML provides the native software plumbing to enable large-scale e-commerce projects to succeed with a true second generation technical solution. SmartXML inserts the functionality for XML data exchange directly into mainframe programs, eliminating middleware, decreasing costs and increasing business flexibility. SmartXML consists of a suite of software modules applicable to mainframe CICS programs, batch programs, reports, data file exchanges and support for mainframe programmers. SmartXML is available now as a part of Forecross service offerings. www.forecross.com

SilverStream Software, Inc. announced the general availability of xCommerce, a family of B2B integration server products that leverages XML, enabling companies to quickly build, integrate and deploy powerful eCommerce applications. xCommerce is a unified, complete product line that allows business analysts and developers to use XML to combine online business applications with legacy systems and data – and extend these applications across organizations and their external trading communities. xCommerce solutions help companies streamline B2B processes by managing enterprise applications and transactions across extended supply chains. xCommerce provides a number of advanced capabilities that make it easier for organizations to develop and rapidly implement e-commerce applications. Its visual integration features allow non-programming users to quickly and effectively manage highly customized trading partner relationships. xCommerce offers application connectivity so organizations can easily integrate e-commerce solutions with any XML-enabled application, as well as proprietary, host-based systems. xCommerce deploys B2B solutions into J2EE application servers, delivering enterprise-level security, scalability and reliability. xCommerce consists of: xCommerce Designer, a highly visual XML development and integration environment; xCommerce Server, a Java framework for XML integration deployment and management; and xCommerce Enterprise Enablers, a suite of adapters that provide XML-based enablement of business systems running on a variety of platforms, including IBM mainframes, AS/400 systems, relational databases, and Java-based business logic. xCommerce Server is can be deployed with J2EE application servers running on Windows NT and Unix. In addition to supporting the SilverStream Application Server, xCommerce will also support IBM’s WebSphere and other commercial application servers. These deployments exploit all native server capabilities, including thread management, connection pooling, transactions, load balancing and failover. Additionally, xCommerce supports all emerging XML vocabulary standards such as RosettaNet, OAG, ebXML and cXML. xCommerce is priced at $35,000 per server CPU. Each server CPU includes a 5-user license of xCommerce Designer, a runtime license to the SilverStream Application Server and the xCommerce Enterprise Enabler for JDBC. xCommerce is available immediately. Other Enterprise Enablers will be released during the remainder of 2000 and will be priced separately. www.silverstream.com

FileNET Corporation announced a joint sales and marketing relationship with Art Technology Group, Inc. (ATG). By working together, FileNET and ATG will be able to help joint eBusiness customers leverage real-time Web content for sophisticated online e-business solutions. This partnership brings together FileNET’s Web Content Management and eProcess technologies to organize and access massive amounts of enterprise content and data, and integrate this information into eBusiness strategies using ATG Dynamo. By combining FileNET’s Web Content Management with ATG’s e-commerce and personalization applications, eBusiness customers will be able to leverage the vast amount of data that is continually being updated by FileNET-managed applications, and incorporate that data into dynamic Web sites powered by ATG Dynamo. In addition, using ATG’s sophisticated business rules-based personalization-engine, eBusiness customers will be able to design targeted Web-based marketing applications that match profile and preference information with FileNET-managed information for advanced content targeting. www.FileNET.com

Microsoft Corp. and Interwoven Inc. announced the beta release of Content Express for Microsoft Commerce Server 2000. Microsoft and Interwoven worked together on Content Express, which is designed to enable business users to easily create and manage content for e-commerce solutions built using Microsoft Commerce Server 2000 and the Microsoft Windows DNA 2000 platform. In a related announcement, Microsoft Commerce Server 2000 beta release was announced today. Content Express software provides business users with easy-to-use content management functionality and is integrated with the Commerce Server Business Desk management application. Business users can enter and modify content on the fly and kick-off predefined workflow approvals. Content Express also provides companies with the ability to perform whole site versioning and rollback. Together, Content Express and Commerce Server 2000 enable organizations to significantly reduce both time and costs for Web-site development and management. Businesses that adopt Content Express and need to further scale their Web operations will be able to upgrade to Interwoven TeamSite, Interwoven’s enterprise-class content-management solution. TeamSite provides scalability by enabling the following: empowering technical developers in addition to business contributors; managing sophisticated Web operations including complex workflows; and integrating diverse Web assets such as application code, XML and streaming video and audio. Interwoven TeamSite is available for the Windows 2000 and Windows NT operating systems. www.interwoven.com, www.microsoft.com

BroadVision, Inc. introduced BroadVision One-To-One Publishing, a new offering for next-generation content management. One-To-One Publishing combines BroadVision One-To-One e-commerce applications with a content management solution to provide a structured, and convenient publishing solution for a wide range of media, including Web, wireless, and print. This introduction marks the completion of the marriage between BroadVision One-To-One Enterprise and Interleaf’s XML-based content management tools. The new package represents BroadVision’s integration of XML-based capabilities to its e-commerce application suite and the fruition of its acquisition of Interleaf in April of this year. By storing written and graphical content in a central repository as XML, BroadVision One-To-One Publishing provides personalization of this information for a specific audience, purpose, medium or device. Adding this new offering to its enterprise application suite meets current customer demand to deploy and customize business information and prepares for the near-term need for content delivery to wireless devices. BroadVision One-To-One Publishing transforms static business information into dynamic, structured and reusable content, thereby increasing timeliness and reducing cost. The One-To-One Publishing customer will create new content and edit existing content using familiar applications such as Microsoft Word and PowerPoint. Once created, this information can be broken down into manageable pieces so that multiple users working on separate contributions can combine sections and publish to one Web site, printed document or other medium. The content can also be versioned, meaning that new and old versions of information can coexist for reference and other purposes. Key Features of BroadVision One-To-One Publishing include the capacity to: Create complex content with Microsoft Word and PowerPoint which enables easy translation for use with Web, wireless and print for anytime, anywhere delivery without IT support; Manage the publishing process with graphical workflow administration; Optimize content for multiple touch points; and Re-use and re-purpose content by recombining information in different ways to tailor to additional audiences. One-To-One Publishing will be available in August 2000. www.broadvision.com