Category: Marketing & e-commerce (Page 72 of 77)

Allaire Corporation introduced Allaire Spectra, a packaged system for content management, e-commerce and personalization that enables corporations to embrace the Web as a strategic center of their businesses. In beta testing today at over 170 sites, Allaire Spectra is designed to use best-practices established by successful Internet businesses, uniting content, commerce and customer interaction capabilities into a common model for enterprise-wide Web systems. Incorporating best practices in building and running large-scale Web businesses, Allaire Spectra is based on the concept of “transactive content” — systems that combine a tight relationship between the management of Web content assets, services that extend a company’s business models into e-commerce, and the ability to deliver this package to the customer in a rich, personalized manner. Allaire Spectra is designed around a model and methodology for building large scale content and commerce systems that embrace the idea that every participant in an enterprise has a unique set of requirements to be productive in their use of the Web. This spectrum of participants spans system administrators, developers, designers, business managers and users, as well as customers, partners, and site affiliates. With Allaire Spectra implemented across an enterprise, each member of the spectrum can use the Web in a logical way. For example, it gives business managers and users a rich set of Web-based tools for managing workflows and security roles, conducting analysis and reporting on the business, and self-managing content and commerce assets without any IT intervention. The six core services of Allaire Spectra include: Content Management, Workflow and Process Automation, Roles-based Security, Personalization, Business Intelligence, and Syndication. Allaire Spectra, which runs on Windows NT and Solaris, is currently in beta. The product is expected to ship in Q4 1999. A bundled offering that includes servers, tools, training, consulting and support will be priced at approximately $100,000. Standard pricing for Allaire Spectra will be $7,495 per server and requires ColdFusion Enterprise Application Server. www.allaire.com

XMLSolutions Corporation (XMLS) announced today that they have signed Lisle Technology Partners (LTP) as a strategic development partner. As a strategic partner, LTP will be involved in assisting XMLSolutions in technical product direction, as well as a resource partner for implementing the product strategy. The first project LTP will work on for XMLSolutions is the Exeter family of XML-based e-commerce products, a suite of products specifically designed to fulfill the objective of business-to-business e-commerce. The Exeter product set includes the Exeter XML Server, Exeter E-commerce Engine and Exeter EDI Parser. This application suite eliminates the manual processes of trade by enabling computer applications and humans to exchange business documents written in XML. www.xmls.com, www.lisletech.com

webMethods, Inc., and MRO.com, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of PSDI, announced the companies have entered a strategic partnership to deliver a series of XML-based e-Commerce solutions to PSDI customers. Under the agreement, PSDI will incorporate webMethods’ XML technology into MRO.com, PSDI’s business-to-business e-Commerce network that connects buyers and suppliers over the Internet. MRO.com is an online marketplace that supports the procurement, management, control and purchase of all MRO goods and services. Using webMethods B2B, MRO.com will provide buyers with direct access to Web-hosted and XML-based catalogs and real-time connections to the back-end systems of their suppliers, further reducing the typically high costs associated with traditional, paper-based MRO processes. In addition, PSDI plans to extend its XML-enabled set of Java-based business application interfaces to further enhance MAXIMO, its industry leading EAM system, for business-to-business integration with enterprise systems. This will allow integration with applications and systems from a wide array of vendors inside or outside the firewall. www.webmethods.com, www.psdi.com

Linguistic Technology Corporation (LTC) unveiled EasyAsk eCom 1.0, a new natural language question/answer search technology for e-commerce. EasyAsk eCom allows retail consumers, business-to-business buyers and merchants to interact with e-commerce product catalogs and purchase history using plain English. EasyAsk eCom features an extensive vocabulary (dictionary) that is automatically extended upon installation by interrogating the underlying e-commerce database. The dictionary, which can be enhanced dynamically, contains product attributes found in the database and: synonyms, structured hierarchies, and business logic. An Agent feature can monitor the e-commerce database and notify managers of the occurrence of key events. EasyAsk eCom is available immediately. Pricing includes an initial license fee of $5,000 plus a monthly usage and support fee of

The new version delivers enhanced XML support for improved connectivity and data integration, according to the Bedford-based developer. Version 3.1 also includes enhanced SQL functionality to deliver E-commerce applications that support vendor-specific queries on enterprise databases by ven-dors such as Oracle Corp. Currently, Progress has more than 2,000 Apptivity VARs. The company recently formed a program to enable its VARs to extend more than 5,000 packaged applications to the application service provider (ASP) model. With technology and services from Progress, numerous VARs are expected to embrace the ASP business model. www.progress.com

OASIS has agreed to participate in a focus group on Internet Standardization and E-Commerce organized by the Office of Science and Technology Policy of the Executive Office of the President of the United States. The focus group, which will be held at the White House Conference Center in Washington, DC on Tuesday, July 20, will examine how changing technological, market, and legal environments are affecting the development of standards for the Internet, electronic commerce and knowledge management. www.oasis-open.org

Uniscape announced the launch of its E-Services Translation Portal (ETP), Uniscape.com, a vertical marketplace for translation services that enables businesses to conduct multi-lingual e-commerce. Uniscape.com will enable companies to make human translation quicker, more efficient and reusable. Using Uniscape.com, companies will have the ability to work with translators anywhere in the world and offer them free use of Uniscape’s XML-based Translator Studio. The technology is designed specifically to aid the human translation process by offering access to a scalable translation memory database, workflow automation, content management, reporting and filtering technology. As the translators do their work, it is captured in a scalable translation memory database, where it can be automatically reused across a company’s future translation projects. When content is updated on a Web site or new content is created, the system automatically checks to see if the key terminology, sentences or paragraphs have ever been translated previously. Prior translations are automatically pulled from the database and translators complete the partially translated files using Translator Studio. Companies are charged a minimal transaction fee of a few pennies for each word processed, with discounts based on the overall translation volume and percentage of reuse. Workflow automation automatically routes files and communications between content producers, translators, reviewers, quality assurance and publishers; according to a company’s own business rules and objectives. Reporting capabilities enable companies to track every aspect of their translation and publishing activities. The site will be open in September. Pricing is determined by number of words to be translated and volume of reuse. www.uniscape.com

Andromedia, Inc. announced LikeMinds Personalization Server 3.0. LikeMinds Personalization Server 3.0 makes the most of every click by utilizing virtually any source of consumer behavior data — be it online or offline, implicit or explicit, real time or historical, transactional or navigational — to personalize every interaction from the first click to the final checkout. LikeMinds Personalization Server 3.0 introduces two new personalization engines: The Purchase Engine and the Clickstream Engine. The Purchase Engine enables e-commerce vendors to leverage valuable offline and/or online purchase history data to make personalized recommendations. The Clickstream Engine builds customer profiles in real-time, based on navigational data gathered as customers browse a site. This allows an e-commerce vendor who lacks purchase history data and doesn’t want to force users to fill out lengthy questionnaires to still offer personalized content and product recommendations. The new engines enable LikeMinds to learn by unobtrusively observing online navigational behavior and shopping activities and automatically adapt in real-time to changes in users’ tastes and preferences. The Clickstream and Purchase Engines complement the Preference Engine and Product Matching Engine, which were built into previous versions of LikeMinds Personalization Server. The Preference Engine leverages explicitly stated preferences. The Product Matching Engine makes recommendations based on product similarities, enabling vendors to immediately recommend new products, before customers have seen, rated, or bought them. No other personalization solution offers e-marketers so many options for leveraging consumer behavior data to personalize interactions with users on their Web sites. LikeMinds Personalization Server 3.0 requires Windows NT 4.0 running on Pentium-class PCs or Solaris 2.6 running on Sun SPARC stations or Ultra SPARC workstations, any CGI-compliant Web server, and ODBC-compliant databases including Oracle 8 and SQL Server 7.0. LikeMinds Personalization Server 3.0 is priced from $25,000 and is available immediately. www.andromedia.com