Category: Marketing & e-commerce (Page 63 of 77)

The HR-XML Consortium announced that more than 25 organizations have endorsed an XML framework designed to enable web-based workforce management and recruiting services. Based on open, business-to-business e-commerce models, these next- generation workforce management and recruiting services promise to deliver employers greater ROI for their staffing expenditures, while giving HR and staffing vendors new opportunities for growth and profit. The HR-XML Consortium is a newly formed non-profit group dedicated to the development and promotion of standardized human-resources-related XML vocabularies for enabling business-to-business e-commerce and the automation of inter-company exchanges of human resources data. Staffing and Recruiting is the first of many HR areas that the HR-XML Consortium will standardize. www.icarian.com

fourthchannel customers can now easily link the Internet company’s e-commerce selling solutions to dozens of front- and back-office applications, thanks to a strategic partnership with Oberon Software Inc.. The new arrangement brings together fourthchannel, inc. with Oberon Software Inc. to provide a complete Internet Business Environment (IBE) for mid-market manufacturers and distributors. Oberon’s e-Enterprise Integration Platform provides the means for fast and complete integration with numerous front- and back-office applications and information-sharing technologies. This includes enterprise applications such as J.D. Edwards, Ariba, Manugistics, SAP, Oracle, Siebel, Peoplesoft , and Baan , as well as technologies such as IBM’s MQSeries and XML, without costly and time-intensive custom programming. Integration between fourthchannel Release 2.0 and Oberon’s e-Enterprise integration platform will be available in the first quarter of 2000 through fourthchannel’s existing sales channels. www.oberon.com, www.fourthchannel.com

Communication Intelligence Corporation (“CIC”) announced that it released a new version of its e-signature solution with support for Palm handheld devices. Sign-it 2.0 provides enterprise customers with a solution for secure electronic document approval and on-line transactions within Adobe Acrobat 4.0 for applications such as document workflow, contract execution, and e-commerce. CIC has seen a trend toward electronic service providers subsidizing the device costs to purchasers of their services, similar to the current cellular phone industry. Some financial institutions and on-line providers may soon be providing handheld devices with Internet access, such as the Palm VII wireless organizer, to their customers to encourage an increase in transactions while offering them the convenience of mobile access. Sign-it 2.0 will offer a cost effective and reliable means to both secure and authorize transactions and documents electronically whether in the enterprise or a mobile environment. www.cic.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

Bowstreet delivered a universal directory service language for the Internet to three key Internet standards bodies. This language, called Directory Services Markup Language (DSML), is supported by the collective efforts of IBM, Microsoft, Novell, Oracle, and the Sun-Netscape Alliance. By helping establish directories as the infrastructure for e-commerce applications, DSML enables easy sharing of valuable business data and processes within and across company boundaries. DSML will also accelerate the industry shift toward business-to-business applications built on Web services, modular units of software functionality located anywhere on the Internet. DSML and Web services will enable companies to develop dynamic e-commerce Web sites that can uniquely meet the needs of a company’s customers and business partners. The DSML 1.0 specification submission enables different vendors’ directory services to work together more easily by describing their contents – including data about people and computing resources – in XML. The announcement keeps the working group’s July 12 promise to reach consensus on a draft standard this year. The six companies turned over the DSML 1.0 specification draft to OASIS. In an effort to gain rapid and widespread acceptance, DSML 1.0 information is also being provided to the W3C and BizTalk. The DSML effort builds upon Bowstreet’s work over the past two years on the Bowstreet Web Automation Factory, a system for dynamically creating, managing, and linking mass-customized Web sites for B2B e-commerce. www.dsml.org, www.bowstreet.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

Sun Microsystems, Inc. announced that its Forte Fusion enterprise application integration (EAI) suite will feature enhanced support for XML and Java-based technologies that have emerged as the foundation for standards-based e-commerce solutions. Fusion uses an XML-based integration backbone and XSL for data integration. In addition, Sun announced that Forte Fusion will be enhanced to support Java technology-based adapters and Sun’s Java Message Queue 1.0 enterprise messaging software, giving customers increased access to open technologies to dot-com their businesses. The Fusion XSLT Data Transformation Engine employs XSLT to solve the core data transformation problem at the heart of any EAI solution. To support the development of XSLT rules, the Fusion Workshop for XSLT provides a graphical interactive workshop for authoring and testing. These XSLT capabilities will be available in the beta release of Forte Fusion 2.0 scheduled for the first quarter of 2000. During 2000, Forte Fusion will be enhanced to support Sun’s Java Message Queue 1.0 enterprise messaging software as a transport for its XML-based data integration backbone. Within Forte Fusion, messaging services are used to link separate applications into the Fusion backbone, which in turn provides services for data transformation and connectivity into the Fusion Business Process Engine. Fusion’s Java Message Queue support will complement existing support for HTTP and IBM’s MQSeries. In the Forte Fusion architecture, adapters are application wrappers whose sole purpose is to XML-enable applications that are not equipped with native XML support. Adapters connect to the Fusion backbone through a message transport, while the backbone provides semantic integration through the transformation of XML with XSL rules. This approach ensures that adapters are lightweight, quick to develop and reusable as general-purpose XML adapters. www.forte.com/product/fusion

Microsoft Corp. announced availability of the BizTalk Framework Document Specification 1.0, an updated component of the framework based on XML schemas and industry standards for sharing information. Microsoft submitted the BizTalk Framework Document Specification 1.0 to the BizTalk Steering Committee – composed of vendors, standards bodies and corporate customers – for review in September. The committee finalized and published the document specifications on the BizTalk.Org Web site (www.biztalk.org). Any individual or organization can access the specifications and use them to implement e-commerce and application integration solutions using the BizTalk Framework. With the final version of the specification now available, corporate developers and independent software developers can immediately embark on the development of BizTalk-compatible applications. The BizTalk Steering Committee provides guidance on the future direction of the BizTalk Framework and includes American Petroleum Institute, Ariba Inc., The Baan Co., The Boeing Co., Clarus Corp., CommerceOne Inc., Concur Technologies Inc., Data Interchange Standards Association (DISA), J.D. Edwards & Co., Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc., Microsoft, New Era of Networks (NEON), The Open Applications Group (OAG), PeopleSoft Inc., Pivotal Corp., RosettaNet and SAP AG. www.microsoft.com/industry/biztalk