Netscape Announces Plans To Integrate XML

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., March 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Netscape Communications Corporation (Nasdaq: NSCP - news) today announced that it will integrate comprehensive support for XML across its portfolio of e-commerce applications. This process is enabling business customers to harness the benefits of XML to streamline interoperability between companies to better manage their commerce foundation in the Net Economy.

Continuing its ongoing support for open standards, Netscape is leveraging XML, a common language for doing business on the Internet, to build real business solutions for fast, flexible interactive communications. Support for the XML language is a key ingredient to Netscape's e-commerce strategy that will enable new cross-company business models. Netscape's implementation of XML will support e-commerce transactions, business processes and catalog exchanges.

The XML standard is designed to facilitate the exchange of online data and be flexible to fit the individual needs of an enterprise. The language provides a medium to identify Web content such as text and pictures so that it can be read automatically.

The NetscapeŽ CommerceXpert family of packaged applications enable Internet commerce exchange, corporate procurement, online selling and customer information services. Netscape CommerceXpert products that are scheduled to support XML include NetscapeŽ BuyerXpert, NetscapeŽ ECXpert, NetscapeŽ SellerXpert and NetscapeŽ TradingXpert.

``Netscape maintains strong leadership among IT vendors in providing flexible e-commerce solutions, and a recent IDC report ranks Netscape first in the industry for total sales of electronic commerce applications in 1998,'' said Steve Savignano, senior vice president and general manager of Netscape's Application Products Division. ``With Netscape's new XML strategy, we will continue to lead the industry in providing customers with best-of-breed solutions for competing and communicating in the Net Economy.''

``XML is a foundational step for companies to align their business processes and improve interactions with partners and customers, and RosettaNet is working to define the common XML-based standard from which the IT community can build its e-business infrastructure,'' said Fadi Chehade, chief executive officer of RosettaNet, a consortium of IT supply chain partners working together to define industry standards for their business-to-business electronic commerce processes. ``Netscape's XML support will clearly help to drive standardization of software applications in order to facilitate cross-company electronic commerce.''

The Netscape CommerceXpert solutions are expected to use XML to facilitate management of cross-company business processes between trading partners. For example, ECXpert and TradingXpert allow companies to send and receive data transmissions over the Internet, an Intranet or an Extranet in an encrypted manner. Using XML as the enabling technology, customers can integrate ECXpert's or TradingXpert's communications features with other industry defined processes to build their own e-commerce structure.

Netscape's Internet procurement and selling solutions are expected to support XML-based catalog exchanges, allowing both enterprise buyers and suppliers to conduct communications with all partners on one flexible standard to streamline processes and dramatically cut costs. Using the XML language, companies can increase the number of suppliers and customers with which they interact to expand business relationships, increase catalog content and help drive revenue.

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