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EXTOL Launches Focused B2B Tools
Published: January 29, 2008
by Alex Woodie
EXTOL last week rolled out a new collection of products aimed at solving business-to-business integration problems. The new offerings, called Business Extenders, are subsets of EXTOL's full suite of integration software that are designed to tackle single-issue problems, like converting orders arriving via Excel spreadsheets into EDI formats.
EXTOL has been developing native OS/400 and i5/OS EDI translation tools for decades. More recently, as B2B communication has evolved, EXTOL has added support for technologies such as XML, AS2, and GSM1, to its flagship integration broker, the Java-based EXTOL Business Integrator suite of tools.
Last week, the Pennsylvania company announced it is now licensing subsets of Business Integrator's functionality as EXTOL Business Extenders. EXTOL decided that, instead of giving customers the entire suite of tools, they may be better off with a highly targeted and pre-configured version of the product designed to solve specific integration problems.
For example, one EXTOL customer, Randa Luggage (formerly Badanco), was experiencing difficulty communicating with its Chinese manufacturers, which didn't use EDI. "Every morning we printed out the spreadsheets that came over from China,” says Gino Giombetti, vice president of operations of Randa. "Our EDI coordinator literally had stacks of paper all around her office. Despite our best efforts, there were always delays, data entry errors, and our sales department consistently fell short on their promise to ship commitments."
After installing EXTOL's Business Extenders, those spreadsheets are now automatically converted into Randa's EDI format, thereby eliminating re-keying, errors, data latency delays, and the need for custom programming. Now, every Monday morning, Randa receives updates from its 16 Chinese factories in EDI format. And the EDI coordinator no longer must shuffle spreadsheets. "She's freed up from the stacks of paper to work on much more strategic projects," Giombetti says.
The EXTOL Business Extenders are available now. For more information, visit www.extol.com.
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Save the date for COMMON's 2008 Annual Meeting and Exposition, March 30 - April 3, 2008 in Nashville, Tennessee, at the Gaylord Opryland Resort.
This premier System i education and networking event is COMMON's largest event of the year, offering five full days of System i education and evening socials.
The conference will feature well over 500 educational sessions, hands-on labs, and all-day workshops covering a wide variety of topics in solutions development, infrastructure management, and business/ professional development. There will be sessions on hot topics like PHP, DB2 Web Query, IP Telephony, Domino 8 and IBM's next new release: i5/OS V6R1. There will also be sessions aimed at IT Strategy, IT Leadership and personal development, to accommodate your less technical roles at work. All classes are delivered by the most respected and knowledgeable presenters in the industry.
In addition to the leading edge education, the Annual Meeting and Exposition provides an invaluable networking forum for attendees to interact with their System i community. After a full day of education, the evening iSocial events provide attendees the opportunity to relax, have some fun, and exchange knowledge and real-world experiences with fellow attendees, speakers, solution providers and IBM. iSociety Face-to-Face Sessions offer attendees the ability to hold "face-to-face" discussions on any special interest topic - technical or otherwise. The contacts you make at the conference will be as valuable as the education you receive.
You will also have access to the world's largest System i-related Exposition, which encompasses more that 80 of the leading industry exhibitors, including a large IBM presence. The COMMON Exposition provides a one-stop source of up-to-the-minute information and products for the IT industry. Discover what's new in the System i world, and learn how you and your company can reduce costs and improve productivity by leveraging the products and services featured at the COMMON Exposition. You can compare and contrast your alternatives, and discover which solution best suits your needs.
Finally, the Annual Meeting and Exposition is the place for you to hear from the Board of Directors about COMMON, and is your chance to communicate with them in person. Bring your questions, comments and feedback to the meeting of the members at the Annual Meeting and Exposition.
COMMON's 2008 Annual Meeting and Exposition will offer:
· Over 500 sessions and hands-on labs in a range of choices every hour
· i5/OS V6R1 sessions
· Customer experience sessions and new speakers
· In-depth education through all-day pre-conference workshops, all-day Integrated Seminars, open labs
· Emphasis on networking that provides great opportunities to network with your peers, IBM developers, executives, and industry experts
· iSocial events for fun and relaxation
· An extensive Exposition of new companies showcasing the latest System i-related industry solutions
The COMMON 2008 Annual Meeting and Exposition is a System i educational and networking event that you and/or your team won't want to miss. To learn more about the conference visit
www.common.org
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Editor: Alex Woodie
Contributing Editors: Dan Burger, Joe Hertvik,
Shannon O'Donnell, Timothy Prickett Morgan
Publisher and Advertising Director: Jenny Thomas
Advertising Sales Representative: Kim Reed
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