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Leading
magazine publishes article by Michael L. Carroll on the use
of XML-based standards in B2B
Upland,
Calif., Feb 1, 2000, Michael L. Carroll, president and CEO
of CyberStrategies, Inc., is in the news with a brand new
article entitled "Beneath
the Vortals" published in the February 2000 issue of Webtechniques
magazine. In this article, Carroll, a veteran Internet technologist,
examines the leading commercial users of XML (eXtensible Markup
Language) for business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce.
"Vortal"
is short for "vertical portal", meaning a portal for a vertical
industry segment. In his article, Mr. Carroll discusses three
evolving XML standards relevant to the vortal space: Ariba's
Commerce XML (cXML), Commerce One's Common Business Library
(CBL), and Microsoft's BizTalk Framework.
As
Carroll's article points, the economic motive for all this
B2B e-commerce is clear: The Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD) predicts that by the year 2003, e-commerce
transactions could reach $1 trillion, an increase in volume
over 1998 of more than 4000 percent! The OECD also estimates
that by the same year B2B will be the dominant e-commerce
sector, with more than $800 billion in goods and services
exchanging hands. More recent predictions, however, have put
the B2B sector alone at more than $2.3 trillion by the end
of 2003!
As
B2B e-commerce continues to grow, more and more companies
will want to settle on a relatively small number of standards
to facilitate their B2B transactions. At this point, it looks
like it will pay to keep an eye on XML-oriented standards
such as cXML, CBL, and BizTalk. Given that the three main
sponsors (Ariba, Commerce One, and Microsoft) are all talking,
comparing notes, and deferring to some extent to the wisdom
of the W3C, it's likely that these standards may be able to
interoperate more easily in the future.
At least it's not too far-fetched to see applications in the
future that will be able to parse and translate from one set
into another. It's also evident that a successful vortal must
provide both content aggregation and e-commerce transaction
capabilities. A combination of software like Epicentric's
Portal Server for gaining access to newsfeeds and other industry-specific
content, and Commerce One's BuySite/MarketSite 3.0 package,
or Ariba's ORMS/Ariba Network, looks like a fast way to get
a vortal up and running and, at the same, adhere to emerging
XML-based standards.
For
more information on XML-based B2B and CyberStrategies, Inc.
work in this arena, contact Peter Trenery at 909-920-9154,
x29, or by email at ptrenery@csz.com.
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