InformationWeek

Wednesday, August 12, 1998

Netscape Intros Workflow Product For Extranet

etscape will introduce tomorrow a new workflow offering for companies that want to automate certain paper-based processes by moving them to extranets connected to their business partners.

Netscape Process Manager 1.0 is available in beta from the company and will be commercially available in the fall. The product includes a development tool for building business forms, a deployment engine based on the Netscape Enterprise Server and Netscape Directory Server, an administration kit, and a user interface. The product is aimed at companies that want to use Internet technologies to exchange forms for tasks such as contract negotiations, technical support, and employee recruitment.

"This is focused on process management for the extended enterprise," says Sharmila Shahani, Netscape's director of application server marketing. That overlaps with other Netscape products such as its BuyerXpert, but she says that product is specifically built for corporate procurement whereas Process Manager is adaptable to other types of processes.

--Gregory Dalton