November 2000

Leading supply-chain software specialist IBS has announced its contribution to the drive towards cross-company systems integration. It is a new product called ASW Virtual Enterprise, and is intended to help trading partners work in collaboration.

IBS says Virtual Enterprise allows direct integration with all kinds of data source, software, business portals and mobile devices. It includes modelling tools for analysis and benchmarking; event-driven alerts; and supply-chain visibility features. The first components, which are due for release early next year, include systems for sales, procurement and supply-chain visibility. Collaborative commerce will follow. Behind the new product is IBM's WebSphere Business Components, which have been developed under IBM's San Francisco shared-frameworks project, in which other leading software vendors are also participating. Systems emerging from this initiative are written entirely in Java, and are considered to be pushing the Java programming environment to new limits.