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Executive Summary
Toromont Industries/InformationWeek Live RFP

INTERSHOP Communications

INTERSHOP's goal is to provide Toromont customers with better access to sales and service information and give them the ability to update information and place orders over the Internet. The storefront is built on INTERSHOP Enfinity, and the direct access to the company's order-entry and billing system is provided through AS/400 Toolbox for Java connection to retrieve pricing, availability and other data.

Solution Architecture
Built on Java and XML, INTERSHOP Enfinity is the heart of a powerful sell-side E-commerce solution governing transactions, catalog, merchandising, and many other business functions. Enfinity includes tools and interfaces to deploy an innovative E-commerce application that can be quickly and easily adapted to changing business needs.

Toromont CAT's order-entry and billing system is a Cobol system on an AS/400 model 720 computer with a DB2 database. It supports order entry for parts and machine sales, service work-order processing, warranties, and inventory with a fully integrated financial subsystem from Baan.

The AS/400 Toolbox for Java is a library of Java classes supporting the client/server and Internet programming model to an AS/400 server. The classes can be used to easily access AS/400 data and resources. With Enfinity and AS/400 for Java from IBM, INTERSHOP creates a powerful and flexible solution for the integration of AS/400 and an Internet storefront with dynamic data retrieval.

Key Features and Benefits
Sell Anywhere
With Enfinity, customers have the ability to sell anywhere on the Internet, not just your own Web site. Enfinity allows them to sell by managing transactions on affiliate sites, portals and marketplaces. Using Enfinity, customers can also create best-in-class traditional Web-site storefronts; integrate transactions through non-storefront Web-sites; sell via mobile phones, personal digital assistants and other appliances, support silent commerce from machine-to-machine transactions.

Integrate Everything
Enfinity is built on standards-based technology that offers an open architecture to easily integrate third-party solutions, such as CRM and ERP systems. Customers can add their own integration through the Enfinity Cartridge API (eCAPI) and the Enfinity Remote XML Interface (eRXI).

Today and Tomorrow

INTERSHOP Enfinity enables rapid deployment and quick time-to-market today with room for future growth. It is the first sell-side E-commerce application completely developed on Java and XML offering extensive functionality out of the box, reducing development cycles, which translates into quick deployment and return on investment. It supports multiple XML flavors (ICE, cXML, BizTalk) and other leading industry standards such as EJB, BAPI, LDAP, CORBA, WAP, digital certificates and UN/SPSC.

Visual Pipeline Manager
Enfinity's Visual Pipeline Manager is a visual tool for developing complex business flows using pipelines. Pipelines are at the center of Enfinity's ability to separate business logic from presentation and development. A pipeline is a symbolic representation of a business flow. It includes nodes that denote a particular type of execution step in a pipeline.

Pipeline
A pipeline is a logical model of a business flow. It combines a number of business tasks, using a determined syntax, to delineate the logical business flow. A pipeline can include pipelets, control and interaction nodes.

Pipelet
The pipelets are Java classes that perform the detailed work of handling a buyer's request, as well as back-office requests from the Enfinity Management Console.

Back to Toromont RFP

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