Renee Boucher Ferguson

With the frequency of technology companies announcing lowered earnings expectations, major layoffs and dead-in-the-water business deals increasing, it almost comes as no surprise when a company announces it is going out of business. When that company was a provider of business-to-business e-commerce technology, the effects of its closing can ricochet through its customer base as […]

In another step in its plan to build market-leading positions in enterprise portal, supply chain management and customer relationship management software, German software giant SAP AG has said it will buy TopTier Software Inc. A partner of SAP since 1999, TopTier develops enterprise information portal software and related integration products. TopTiers technology, which is already […]

Actional Corp. is looking to make connecting front- and back-end systems easier. The Mountain View, Calif., company last week upgraded ACB (Actional Control Broker) with scalability and functional enhancements that enable corporations to integrate front-office, back-office and legacy systems at the data level without inserting centralized Enterprise Application Integration middleware. ACB 3.0 adds Scalability Manager, […]

Webplan Corp., Ozro Inc. and IBM are targeting new hosted SCM products at companies that have had neither the time nor the resources to develop their own business-to-business e-commerce applications. Webplan will launch in two weeks its eSupply-Chain.Net platform, which bundles its existing supply chain management application Ceo into a hosted package. eSC.Net will provide, […]

Commerce One Inc. and Ariba Inc. have a new ally in common that helps suppliers keep track of procurement information. Trigo Technologies Inc. last week announced alliances with both e-commerce platform providers that are aimed at offering suppliers quick access to Commerce Ones and Aribas e-procurement systems. Trigo develops supplier-focused software that is designed to […]

Since taking over the CEO position at PeopleSoft Inc. nearly two years ago, Craig Conway has remodeled the company in his own image—that of an intense, aggressive, no-nonsense businessman. While the effort has paid off in some ways—last fall, the software developer completed a major overhaul of its flagship suite of enterprise resource planning applications […]

Infrastructure has never been one of the more compelling components of an e-business system, but IBM, Genuity Inc. and Firstsource Corp. are taking stabs at making IT managers take notice of e-commerce building blocks. IBM, of Armonk, N.Y., next month will unveil its BtoBi platform, which not only acts as an infrastructure platform for companies […]

Despite promises of end-to-end solutions, many companies are still having difficulties integrating with e-marketplaces, buyers and suppliers. GE Global Exchange Services is out to change that with three initiatives it is using from its e-commerce community—a community that boasts more than 100,000 trading partners that conduct 1 billion transactions a year. GXS, a subsidiary of […]

When manufacturers set out to take advantage of electronic cataloging, many settled for simply listing the parts and products available. These days, as buyers demand more information and place more unique orders, such lists simply dont suffice. As a result, some manufacturers, in turn, are pushing their business-to-business software providers to give them more capabilities […]

VerticalNet Inc., a company that in the past few months said it would move away from the business-to-business exchange model to focus on becoming a software and services provider, late last month said it is buying another exchange. Commerx Inc., an e-business software and networks provider, announced that it is divesting its online exchange for […]