InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
February 28, 2000
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Offerings could help the business-to-business market
By Jeff Sweat
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nterprise application integration software vendors Extricity Software Inc. and Active Software Inc. are strengthening their business-to-business integration offerings with new products released last week.Extricity, which until now has focused on the external integration between businesses and their partners and suppliers, is expanding on that expertise with Extricity Alliance for Net Markets, a suite of software designed to form the underpinnings of online exchanges and marketplaces. While most exchanges provide little integration on the business-process level between trading partners, the Extricity product helps companies connect data flowing from their applications directly into partners' applications.
Though Extricity already offered the ability to link partners, the new software provides prebuilt components for common exchange functions such as procurement, order management, inventory management, collaborative-purchasing planning, and logistics. Extricity will also team with exchange-technology vendors Commerce One, Commerce Quest, and Moai Technologies to improve its exchange capabilities.
RightFreight.com, a New York company that hosts exchanges linking airlines, shippers, and freight forwarders, says it plans to use Extricity's exchange product to link its own freight-management system directly into its customers' proprietary systems. So, for example, if an airline has room for freight on a flight, it can automatically feed the information into the exchange and let participating freight forwarders buy the space. "Extricity will decrease the amount of time necessary to integrate our system into our clients' processes and businesses," says RightFreight.com VP of marketing Lane Butler.
Analysts say that while Extricity's business-to-business expertise makes it a good fit for exchanges, it may fall short in handling the functions marketplaces require. But that's a shortcoming shared by other application integration software vendors. "All of them have to move into exchanges, but they have limited experience working with exchange vendors," says Kimberly Knickle, an analyst with AMR Research.
And though almost every application integration vendor has introduced or is readying products that integrate with external partners, many companies still have a greater need for internal application integration. But Knickle says some IT organizations will be able to budget more money for integration if it's tied to E-business initiatives.
Active Software is making its entry into the business-to-business market with the ActiveWorks Business Exchange Server. The software uses Extensible Markup Language to manage the exchange of E-commerce documents between trading partners. It also supports XML's Partner Interface Protocol, which helps define common processes between partners such as supply-chain management, and provides graphical models to set up common business transactions between partners.
Alodar Systems Inc., a Torrance, Calif., integrator that has been deploying Active's integration products, says Business Exchange Server's XML base means not all partners must have ActiveWorks installed to link application data. That's good, says Mark Thomsen, co-founder of Alodar, because "not everyone will use the same integration product."
Pricing for Extricity Alliance for Net Markets, available immediately, starts at $50,000. ActiveWorks Business Exchange Server will ship in the second quarter; pricing will start at $125,000.
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