NEON Tackles E-Business Integration

New Era of Networks' (NEON) e-Biz Integrator addresses what for many application-integration vendors is the next phase: e-commerce integration. <P> Instead of merely connecting internal processes, the software will link e-commerce sites with the legacy and packaged applications that run them. <P> NEON said application integration will be critical to effective e-business: "You do e-business by leveraging what you have, instead of building from scratch," said senior vice president of worldwide marketing Mike Donaldson. <P> For instance, if a company lets a business partner place orders online, NEON's application integration will link those orders directly to a company's inventory, order-fulfillment, and customer-relationship management systems. <P> The e-Biz Integrator will tie into Web-application servers such as those from Commerce One and BroadVision, as well as e- commerce protocols such as XML and electronic-data interchange. It will have two main components: an integration server that routes and transforms data to connect to other applications; and a process server, which lets IT organizations map out cross-application business processes with a GUI. <P> The product, available immediately, will be priced starting at $100,000.