IBM Makes Online Purchasing Easier with Support for OBI Standard
SciQuest Offers an OBI Purchasing Solution Using IBM Net.Commerce
Los Angeles (September 24, 1998) – IBM today made it easier for e-businesses to manage and streamline the online procurement process and control procurement costs by announcing support for the Open Buying on the Internet** (OBI) standard. In response to customer needs, IBM has incorporated additional business-to-business purchasing functionality in IBM Net.Commerce beyond the minimum required by the OBI Consortium.
The additional functionality includes the ability to: cancel/reject an order; show order status and approval; enable back-end integration; handle workflow management and manage the supply chain. OBI is an industry standard outlining a common set of business requirements for purchasing transactions in business-to-business electronic commerce.
The IBM Net.Commerce solution was demonstrated at the OBI Interoperability Action Showcase at the Internet Commerce Expo.
Concurrently, IBM announced SciQuest, Inc.*** as the first IBM customer to implement the OBI-compliant IBM Net.Commerce solution on its commerce-enabled Web site. SciQuest, which provides the largest Internet-based directory of scientific products and services, links scientists in the world’s most prestigious institutions with thousands of providers of scientific equipment, supplies and services. By using OBI-compliant IBM Net.Commerce, SciQuest can now directly integrate with buyers’ and sellers’ own procurement and inventory systems to streamline and impact business costs associated with the purchasing process.
“IBM is committed to developing products that support OBI, as well as other business-to-business commerce standards that help our customers maximize the efficiency of their purchasing processes,” said Karl Salnoske, general manager, Electronic Commerce, IBM Software Solutions. “Protocols such as OBI, which promote interoperability among industry vendors, ultimately provide customers with the widest array of options for transforming their operations into successful e-businesses.”
IBM has successfully completed interoperability testing for IBM Net.Commerce with multiple industry software vendors and suppliers. By interoperating with other OBI-compliant solutions, IBM Net.Commerce:
ensures that buying and selling organizations can communicate effectively during a purchase;
allows for scalability for future growth; and
accelerates an organizations electronic commerce implementation by enabling “plug-n-play” capability between suppliers and customers regardless of their purchasing solution.
At the OBI Interoperability Action Showcase, IBM will demonstrate the interoperability of IBM Net.Commerce merchant server software with customer Internet purchasing solutions from Boise Cascade, SciQuest and VWR. In addition, IBM Net.Commerce will interoperate with other software vendors’ solutions including: Connect, EPIC Systems, Intelisys, Microsoft and Netscape.
In addition to OBI, IBM Net.Commerce can support multiple industry protocols for business-to-business electronic commerce, including: Extensible Mark-up Language (XML), RosettaNet, SET Secure Electronic Transaction****, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), Open EDI, and Supply Chain Framework (SCF) as well as Open Trading Protocol (OTP) for business-to-consumer electronic commerce.
IBM
IBM Net.Commerce is part of the WebSphere* family and will assume WebSphere branding in 1999. As a result, current IBM Net.Commerce customers will benefit from the broad range of functionality of the new WebSphere application server family.
IBM is the world’s largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping business innovate. IBM Software offers the widest range of applications, middleware and operating systems for all types of computing platforms, allowing customers to take full advantage of the new era of e-business. The fastest way to get more information about IBM software is through the IBM Software home page at http://www.software.ibm.com .
Source: IBM