[November 16, 1999] Customer Profile Exchange (CPEX) Working Group Formed. An initial group of (twenty-five-some) vendors have formed a working group aimed at creating a 'unified view' of business relationships and global privacy safeguards. According to one announcement, the initiative involves an 'XML-based standard incorporates online and offline data to enable singular, simultaneous customer view within multiple enterprise applications.' "Addressing the need for e-businesses to maintain a singular, holistic view of their customers, leading vendors in the e-business and e-customer applications market today announced the Customer Profile EXchange (CPEX) working group. CPEX offers a vendor-neutral, open standard for facilitating the privacy-enabled interchange of customer information across disparate enterprise applications and systems. Charter working group members currently include [numerous] industry leaders... The CPEX standard integrates online and offline customer data in an XML-based data model for use within various enterprise applications both on and off the Web. The result is a networked, customer-focused environment that allows e-businesses to leverage a unified view of their customers into more compelling e-relationships. More than simply a DTD or XML tag set, CPEX will include a data model, transport and query definitions, and a framework for enabling privacy safeguards. Businesses will be able to apply CPEX across a disparate range of back-office applications, front-office applications and Web customer automation applications. While the benefits of a singular customer view are growing increasingly apparent within an enterprise, CPEX solutions will prove vital in tomorrow's world of connected enterprises. The CPEX working group intends to develop an open-source reference implementation and developer guidelines to speed adoption of CPEX among vendors. CPEX will enable enterprises to implement the privacy safeguards their customers and governments require in a unified approach, rather than piecemeal in each application. The transitive CPEX model of secure customer objects will enable more widespread use of these privacy safeguards independent of the privacy standards that may be developed and instituted. Open to any vendor that wishes to contribute to the standard, the CPEX working group is chaired by Siebel Systems, the Marketing Committee is co-chaired by net.Genesis and Vignette Corporation, and Andromedia/Macromedia chairs the Technical Committee. The CPEX working group is hosted by IDEAlliance.org, a neutral, non-profit organization that also hosts ICE, PRISM and several other XML working groups." See the press release on the Netgen.com Web site: "Leading E-Customer Solution Vendors Form Customer Profile Exchange 'CPEX' Working Group. Open, XML-based standard incorporates online and offline data to enable singular, simultaneous customer view within multiple enterprise applications."
References:
[November 01, 2000] "Customer Profile Exchange (CPExchange) Specification." Edited by Kathy Bohrer and Bobby Holland. October 20, 2000. Version 1.0. 127 pages. 'APPENDIX B' supplies the XML DTDS. "This document presents the Customer Profile Exchange (CPExchange) specification for the privacy-enabled global exchange of customer profile information. It uses the Extensible Markup Language (XML) to format messages transmitted under standard Internet protocols. This specification includes a Customer Information model and a Privacy Information model. Future versions of this specification will include an Operations Information model. The information models contained in this specification facilitate customer profile transport. The models include the metadata that associates data protection (privacy) to customer profiles. A future version will define operations for query, delivery and update of the customer profile information. The specification builds on the W3C XML Schema and the W3C P3P specifications. . . P3P supports a limited set of characteristics defining a Web visitor, with an extensibility mechanism. P3P uses Resource Description Framework (RDF) XML as its interchange format. CPExchange will provide a mapping between its information elements and P3P's data schema. A subset of P3P's specification of privacy levels and policies is used to specify the desired privacy handling of CPExchange data being transferred. The objects and attributes of a CPExchange message payload are described informally in this document with Unified Modeling Language (UML) object model diagrams. The UML object diagrams capture the information and relationships that are then represented in XML format according to the CPEXML DTDs. UML class diagrams capture the object types (classes), their attributes, the attribute types, and relationships between classes. The Customer Profile Exchange (CPExchange) specification is a new standard that takes into account the traditional customer-facing facets of an enterprise, such as customer support, call centers, sales tracking, marketing campaigns and order tracking. This standard builds common ground with emerging web-based Internet Relationship Management (IRM) and Enterprise Relationship Management (ERM) approaches to online business, decision support, and personalisation. The CPExchange specification is a standard that will facilitate the privacy-enabled exchange of customer profile information. The CPExchange specification defines a data model for profile information that relates a customer or other business partner, to an enterprise. The CPExchange specification also defines metadata for associating privacy controls with various subsets of the profile information, as well as operations for query, delivery, and update of this information. This information is represented in Extensible Markup Language (XML), which can be exchanged through messages. The CPExchange specification is intended to support enterprise-wide architectures in which many applications use and update information relating to a customer. This specification differs from enterprise frameworks such as Active Directory Services Interface (ADSI), Java Naming and Directory Interface (JNDI), and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)." [cache]
[November 01, 2000] Collection of twelve (12) DTD files. See the .ZIP archive with CPExchange DTDs, [cache].
[February 26, 2001] "Budding B2B Standard Faces Big Problems. [CPExchange] Specification for Sharing Consumer Data Has No Users, Faces FTC Review." By Patrick Thibodeau. In ComputerWorld (February 12, 2001). "A data standard created to act as a high-tech lubricant for the exchange of customer information is facing problems, including a just-announced review by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and, perhaps more important, a lack of big end-user acceptance so far. The Customer Profile Exchange standard, or CPExchange, offers companies a way around numerous data types and the custom-designed interfaces needed to translate them. If the standard doesn't take off, the process may not improve, proponents say. 'At this point, we do data exchanges that are disastrous. Everybody speaks a different language, everybody has ways of pushing information -- from text files to XML. It is very, very nasty,' said Henri Asseily, chief technology officer at Los Angeles-based BizRate.com, a company that provides customer-generated ratings of e-commerce sites and one of 70 companies that is a member of the CPExchange Network. The first version of CPExchange was published in October, but so far, no company has adopted it. Most of its backers are vendors, with IBM being the largest. Only a few major end-user companies were involved in the standard's development, and two of those companies have apparently distanced themselves from this effort: First Union Corp. in Charlotte, N.C., and Charles Schwab & Co. in San Francisco. Both companies say they have no plans to implement the standard. Asseily said he believes the standard can solve the data exchange problems, but the 127-page specification is 'so complicated that it's very, very difficult for companies to make heads or tails of it.' The FTC announced earlier this month that it will hold a workshop on March 13 on the potential data privacy issues raised by company-to-company exchanges of customer information, prompted in part by a letter from Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.). Shelby claims that the CPExchange technology gives companies a vastly improved ability to share and exploit personal information in pursuit of profit.'... A major selling point for proponents of the CPExchange is the standard's ability to incorporate an individual's privacy preferences. For instance, a company that needs to transmit consumer data to a supplier could attach privacy restrictions that set limits on the use of the data, such as third-party sharing."
[November 02, 2000] "CPExchange Launches New Global Privacy-Enabled Customer Data Interchange Standard to Improve e-Business Customer Relationships." - "The Customer Profile Exchange Network (CPExchange) today launched the newly authored Customer Profile Exchange standard, which creates the first global standard for privacy-enabled customer data interchange. The CPExchange standard allows enhanced customer service in e-business relationships. The new standard will automate tasks and tie the digital economy more tightly together. The CPExchange Network, a volunteer consortium made up of over 70 leading e-business organizations, is offering a vendor-neutral, open standard for exchanging privacy-enabled customer information across different businesses and computer systems. Organizations with many different and separate data sources who are seeking an integrated view of customers -- such as suppliers and employees -- will utilize CPExchange. 'This may be the most significant development in proposed standards since XML, not just as an Internet standard, but a business standard,' said Brad Husick, vice president, standards and evangelism at Vignette Corporation, which founded the standards initiative. 'CPExchange applies to CRM, ECRM, customer care, the Internet, back office applications, front office applications, application servers, networking, supply chains-any thing that touches a customer. CPExchange facilitates the management and promotion of customer relationships, while profiling customer information -- appealing to all industry sectors. Few of today's supply and demand chains share a unified profile of the customer, leaving customer support, order management, lead sharing and other primary business functions working independently to grasp a customer's identity, behaviors and needs. Customer service capability is severely reduced by this lack of shared information, creating significant short and long-term IT integration costs. The CPExchange standards benefit businesses and their customers in the following ways: (1) Customers gain a unified profile of their situation among their suppliers, enjoy better customer service, and reduce the time and complexity of interacting with companies. Significantly, it will allow customers to more easily achieve the levels of privacy they require when handling sensitive and proprietary profile information. (2) Businesses benefit from reduced service costs, better customer service, less time spent deploying multi-vendor solutions, and universally implemented global privacy safeguards. Businesses even gain a competitive advantage through new alliances across the supply and demand chain. (3) Vendors who support CPExchange also benefit by increasing their market size through single customer profile operability. Vendors can deploy their solutions quicker, and gain competitive advantage through new alliances and partnerships..."
[December 08, 2000] "Schemantix (formerly Praxis) to Launch Schemantix Development Platform (SxDP) at XML 2000. Innovative New-Generation Web Platform Makes Its Debut At Premier XML Conference." - "Schemantix today [2000-11-29] announced that it will be launching Schemantix Development Platform (SxDP), the world's first XML schema-driven web development platform, at XML 2000 in Washington, DC. SxDP takes advantage of the innate power of XML to provide a next-generation platform for developing and deploying powerful applications on the Web. Traditional template-based Web development languages (such as PHP, Allaire ColdFusion and Microsoft ASP) have reached their limits, and developers are actively seeking more flexible and robust solutions. Companies using existing systems are particularly frustrated by the overwhelming task of maintaining large-scale applications using hundreds or even thousands of templates. Moreover, since these systems mix application logic and presentation together in each template, it is extremely difficult to reuse business logic in new applications that do not share the same visual design. In contrast, SxDP uses XML schemas to model application data structures, and XSLT stylesheets to produce the desired application look-and-feel. In this way, modifications to the application can be made centrally by adapting the XML schemas appropriately. Pages using the schemas are updated automatically, significantly reducing the effort needed to maintain large applications. In addition, application logic is cleanly separated from appearance and can be associated with a different presentation simply by changing the stylesheet used to produce the final formatting. Preliminary versions of SxDP have already met with favorable response from industry-leading technology companies. 'Commerce One has performed a detailed technical evaluation of Schemantix Development Platform (SxDP). We are impressed by both the vision behind the platform and its excellent technical implementation.' says Mudita Jain, SxDP is being made available as Open Source software with BSD-style license similar to that used by the Apache Software Foundation, a leading Open Source group. Schemantix plans to develop commercial products on top of the platform, with the first product slated for release in Q3 2001."
[October 26, 2000] "Wheelhouse Plays Integral Role in Developing CPExchange Standard. Consortium Releases Vendor-Neutral, Privacy Enabled Open Standard for Interchange of Customer Data Between Enterprise Applications." - "Wheelhouse Corporation, a marketing infrastructure services provider, today announced its influential role in developing the newly launched CPExchange 1.0 standard. CPExchange is a volunteer organization that has worked on developing an open standard to facilitate the privacy-enabled exchange of customer information across disparate applications and systems. As a primary contributor and working group member, Wheelhouse played a critical role in developing, reviewing and editing the first XML standard that specifically addresses the exchange of customer profile information within an enterprise. The standard provides a robust language that will allow for improved communication of customer data between marketing platforms and applications. This enhanced communication is integral to providing enterprises with a unified and actionable customer view that can be used to dramatically improve their customer interactions. The CPExchange standard integrates online and offline customer data in an XML-based data model for use within various enterprise applications both on and off the Web. The result is a networked, customer-focused environment that allows e-businesses to more easily leverage a unified view of their customers for more compelling e-relationships. Businesses can apply the CPExchange standard across a disparate range of back-office applications, front-office applications and Web customer automation applications. The standard includes a data model, transport and query definitions, and a framework for enabling privacy safeguards."
[September 12, 2000] "NewWorld Commerce Joins Customer Profile Exchange (CPEX) Network. Key E-Commerce Standard Initiative to Facilitate Exchange of Customer Information Across Disparate Enterprise Systems." - "NewWorld Commerce, a Seattle-based provider of e-marketing campaign generation and management solutions, today announced its participation in the Customer Profile Exchange (CPEX) network. CPEX offers a vendor-neutral, open standard for facilitating the privacy-enabled exchange of customer information across disparate enterprise applications and systems. NewWorld Commerce has joined others in the CPEX network to address the need to maintain a singular, holistic view of their customers. The CPEX standard integrates online and offline data with an XML-based description of customer information for use within various enterprise applications both on and off the Web. The result is a networked, customer-focused environment that allows e-businesses to leverage a unified view of their customers into more compelling e-relationships. "The benefits of a single customer view and the ability to track all customer interactions are extremely important in today's competitive environment," said Dr. Canice Lambe, CTO of NewWorld Commerce. "By integrating CPEX into our NewWorld Direct solution, disparate systems can talk to each other enabling our clients to have a unified view of their customers' identity, behavior, needs and privacy concerns. We are excited to be part of an organization that is helping to shape industry standards for more open and flexible e-business solutions." NewWorld Commerce is designing for the CPEX standard in its NewWorld Direct solution. NewWorld Direct offers sophisticated e-mail functionality and enables non-technical marketers to create a micro-Web site for each marketing campaign without any technical assistance -- in a matter of hours. It is the only Web-centric permission-based marketing platform that enables marketers to create truly global marketing campaigns on the Internet through customized Web sites, persistent Web messaging and one-to-one relationship development capabilities. It delivers this using a combination of campaign-specific Web action sites, closed-loop campaign reporting on a named-visitor basis, and permission e-mail. Each campaign is created and built directly from the marketer's desktop... Open to any vendor that wishes to contribute to the standard, the CPEX working group is chaired by Siebel Systems, the Marketing Committee is co-chaired by net.Genesis and Vignette Corporation, and Andromedia/Macromedia chairs the Technical Committee. The CPEX working group is hosted by IDEAlliance.org, a neutral, non-profit organization that also hosts ICE, PRISM and several other XML working groups. CPEX solutions are focused upon real-world implementations in real-world time. Formed by Vignette Corporation in September of 1999, CPEX was chartered and launched in November of 1999. The first CPEX specifications are expected to be available for public review in the first half of 2000, with interoperability demos scheduled to begin in the second half of 2000."
[November 16, 1999] "Net Perceptions Announces Four Strategic Alliances to Deliver Personalization Technology to Customers of World's Leading E-Commerce Companies. CEO Predicts Personalization Key to 80 Percent of Corporate Marketing Efforts Within Two Years." - "At the first Personalization Summit in San Francisco today, Net Perceptions Inc. made a series of strategic announcements with a number of the world's leading e-commerce companies. Net Perceptions will work with the companies to deliver a host of enhanced customer relationship and marketing solutions based on its collaborative filtering technology. Together, these announcements underscore Net Perceptions' position as the leading supplier of realtime personalization solutions and reinforce the core importance of personalization technology for the next generation of Internet commerce. Under the agreements announced today, Net Perceptions will work with IBM Corp., net.Genesis and DoubleClick Technologies Inc. to offer an adaptive Internet marketing solution to help customers make more informed decisions about online marketing campaigns, sales strategies and Web content. Net Perceptions, together with leading vendors in e-business and e-customer applications, today announced the Customer Profile Exchange (CPEX), a standard for allowing e-businesses to have a unified view of their customers within multiple enterprise applications... Net Perceptions and formation of Customer Profile Exchange. Net Perceptions joins Vignette, net.Genesis and other leading e-customer solution vendors as a member of the Customer Profile Exchange (CPEX) working group, whose mission is to offer a vendor-neutral, open standard for facilitating privacy-enabled exchange of customer information across disparate enterprise applications and systems. This XML-based standard will incorporate both online and offline data to allow for a singular, holistic view of supply and demand chains, thereby allowing all primary business functions to collectively, rather than independently, grasp a customer's identity, behavior and needs."
[November 22, 1999] "XML to unify Web profiles." By Susan E. Fisher. In InfoWorld (November 19, 1999). "A frequent traveler books a hotel room online. When he gets to the hotel, he explains that he'd like to apply frequent-flyer points he's earned from a program affiliated with the hotel toward a free night's stay. The clerk at the hotel shakes his head; they have no record of the frequent-flyer award. The customer is dissatisfied and considers never doing business with the hotel chain again. The scenario - in which a customer's demands are unfulfilled because the failure of customer information to flow from one application to another - is not uncommon, according to electronic-commerce leaders pledged to solve this problem with the Customer Profile Exchange (CPEX) standard. The consortium this week announced the formation of a working group for CPEX, billed as a vendor-neutral open standard for sharing customer data across disparate applications and systems. For IT professionals who implement e-commerce solutions, trying to achieve that consistent view through application integration takes development time and money, they note. Because customer data resides in a variety of applications and offline repositories, e-businesses are hard- pressed for a consistent, unified view of customers. 'Wouldn't it be great if everyone had the same way of representing [customer] data?' said Steven Mason, vice president of e-business solutions at the Billerica, Mass.-based data technologies division at Harte-Hanks, a CPEX consortium member. The consortium's 21-member working group boasts leading vendors in the e-business and e-customer application arena. The standard they are developing will be based on Extensible Markup Language (XML), integrating customer profiles for back-office and front-office applications, and the Web. CPEX could potentially affect all aspects of how companies manage their customer relationships, including customer support, sales tracking, marketing campaigns, order tracking, enterprise relationship management, and decision support. According to organizers, CPEX will include a data model, transport, and query definitions. Plus, CPEX will encode privacy requirements with the customer data, so customers have a measure of control over what of their personal information is distributed. The need for such a standard is clear. More than 90 percent of companies interviewed by Forrester Research, in Cambridge, Mass., believe that a single, integrated view of the customer is critical. Yet only 2 percent say they have achieved it."
[December 17, 1999] "Passing profiles - Keeping the customer in mind. CPEX group tackles the sensitive issue of exchanging customer profiles." By Luke Cavanagh. In The Seybold Report on Internet Publishing Volume 4, Number 4 (December 1999), page 24. "Sensing the need to find a more efficient way for enterprises to keep customer information current, a number of industry players have formed the Customer Profile Exchange (CPEX) working group. Their intent is to create an XML standard and a set of guidelines for exchanging customer profiles among different systems. Started by Vignette just two months ago, the group's charter members include many of the leading players in personalization and profiling: Andromedia, DoubleClick, Engage, Net Perceptions, net.Genesis and Vignette, as well as industry heavyweights Oracle, Sun/Netscape, IBM and other smaller vendors. The group expects to publish its first draft specifications in the first half of 2000; we should begin seeing demos by next fall. Administration of the group's marketing and meetings will be handled by IDEAlliance.org, the new name for the research institute at the Graphic Communications Association. IDEAlliance also hosts the ICE and PRISM working groups."
[November 24, 1999] "Web Profiling. Marketers collect data on your Web habits. Would you like to see what they see?" By Sebastian Rupley. In PC Magazine [Online] (November 23, 1999). "There's an old saying: "The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know." As online privacy issues have grabbed headlines in recent months, it's apparent that marketers are collecting far more information about our online shopping and surfing habits than most of us realize. At the same time, a large working group of companies, ranging from Compaq and Oracle to Net Perceptions and Andromedia, is working on a new standard, dubbed CPEX (Customer Profile Exchange), for how consumer information is collected and shared. Unlike most of the current subterranean efforts to collect information about your surfing and shopping habits, CPEX is designed on an open-source model where customers may have new levels of control over what they allow to be disseminated about them. The newly proposed CPEX standard for collecting online shopping and surfing information is gaining broad backing. CPEX is designed to integrate online and off-line customer data in an XML-based format for use by companies that want to gather information about consumers. As such, it has the potential to draw the ire of consumers."
[November 24, 1999] "Privacy plan tied to XML. Consumers would control information about themselves." By Jim Kerstetter. In PC Week [Online] Volume 16, Number 47 (November 22, 1999), page 3. "More than 20 vendors, ranging from net.Genesis Corp. and Vignette Corp. to IBM, Siebel Systems Inc. and Oracle Corp., are trying to offer a technical solution to consumer online privacy problems. Last week, the group held a series of meetings here and unveiled the Customer Privacy Exchange, or CPEX, a proposed XML (Extensible Markup Language) standard that, when completed, will allow companies to share information about consumers while allowing consumers themselves to control the information. Unlike many such efforts in the privacy space, developers say CPEX isn't about heading off government intervention in consumer privacy. Intervention, they say, is a foregone conclusion and has already happened in most European Union countries. 'Whatever the government decides to do, we want to make sure companies can deal with it,' said Matthew Cutler, chief e-business intelligence officer at net.Genesis, in Cambridge, Mass. CPEX is still far from completion. The initial specification is expected to be published as an open-source reference by the middle of next year. Developers said they hope to have interoperability demonstrations ready late next year. They also want CPEX to work with the varied XML schemata already in development, such as the Internet Content Exchange and Microsoft Corp.'s BizTalk."
[November 16, 1999] "Calico Joins Key E-Commerce Standard Initiative. Calico Participates in Customer Profile EXchange (CPEX) Working Group." - "Calico Commerce, Inc., a leading provider of electronic commerce software and services, today announced its participation in the Customer Profile EXchange (CPEX) working group. CPEX offers a vendor-neutral, open standard for facilitating the privacy-enabled exchange of customer information across disparate enterprise applications and systems. Calico is committed to helping shape industry standards that broaden the adoption of more open and flexible e-Business solutions. Calico joins other leading e-Business vendors in the CPEX working group to address the need to maintain a singular, holistic view of their customers. The CPEX standard integrates online and offline data with an XML-based description of customer information for use within various enterprise applications both on and off the Web. The result is a networked, customer-focused environment that allows e-businesses to leverage a unified view of their customers into more compelling e-relationships. Open to any vendor that wishes to contribute to the standard, the CPEX working group is chaired by Siebel Systems, the Marketing Committee is co-chaired by net.Genesis and Vignette Corporation, and Andromedia/Macromedia chairs the Technical Committee. The CPEX working group is hosted by IDEAlliance.org, a neutral, non-profit organization that also hosts ICE, PRISM and several other XML working groups. CPEX solutions are focused upon real-world implementations in real-world time. Formed by Vignette Corporation in September of 1999, CPEX was chartered and launched in November of 1999. The first CPEX specifications are expected to be available for public review in the first half of 2000, with interoperability demos scheduled to begin in the second half of 2000. More information on CPEX will be available [soon] at www.cpex.org."
[November 16, 1999] "Internet marketers to develop data standard. Makers of Internet tracking and analysis applications plan standard way to create, store and exchange data on Web users." By Susan Kuchinskas. In ZDNet News (November 15, 1999). "Internet marketers should move a step closer to their Holy Grail of knowing just about everything about everybody in cyberspace on Monday, when nearly 25 makers of Internet marketing, tracking and analysis applications announce they are building a standard way to create, store and exchange data on Web users. Their moniker, CPEX, stands for Customer Profile Exchange. Release of the first version of the standard is targeted for June 2000. The CPEX standard would for example, let an e-commerce site that uses an Oracle Corp. database to store customer information combine the data with that collected by telemarketers for its print catalog. 'Businesses don't have a good picture of who their customers are and what they need, so they can't service them well,' said Matt Cutler, co-founder and chief ebusiness intelligence officer for net.Genesis, of Cambridge, Mass., a maker of Web site analysis software. 'It's our organization's point of view that having an integrated customer view is critical, because, in the Net economy, your competition is just a click away.' The announcement was due at the Personalization Summit, a conference sponsored by Net Perceptions on the role of personalization marketing, which uses the Internet to target marketing to individuals based on knowledge of their tastes and interests. Proponents of Web tracking like to call it personalization -- the back-end applications that let Web users sign up for regular stock quotes, get the local weather and be greeted by name when they log onto a portal. It is even more useful for marketers, who can use the same collected information to target ads and promotions based on users' profiles... 'It will remain the decision support system that differentiates companies,' said Brad Husick, vice president of standards and evangelism for Vignette. 'We're saying we shouldn't argue over the language we speak, but over what we do with that information and the certain conclusions we derive'."
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