iXF Technology Initiative

SmarTeam Announces New Technology Initiative for Product and Plant Information Exchange and Enterprise Application Integration

The iXF Standard Leverages XML-based Technology For Secure, Quick and Effective Collaborative Product Commerce. An Easy-to-deploy Enterprise Application Integration Component for the Manufacturing Supply Chain

BEVERLY, MA. March 5, 2001

Smart Solutions, a Dassault Systemes company and its America's subsidiary, SmarTeam Inc., today announced the creation of a new XML-based industry standard for integrating and exchanging product, plant, or project information throughout Discrete and Process manufacturing enterprises and their supply chains. Backed by Dassault Systemes, the iXF format provides a simple and powerful way for OEMs, parts suppliers, and any participant in the product or plant development chain to exchange information electronically, accurately and securely.

The iXF format is also utilized by SmarTeam and third-party developers as a key component for ERP, CRM and other legacy application integration, and as a basis for a number of new, untethered applications for creating, reading, viewing, updating and deleting product, plant and other related information. The iXF format specification is open and published, and available free of charge. More information can be found at http://www.ixfstd.org.

The iXF format is based on XML, and is compatible with a wide array of business data exchange conventions, including Microsoft Corporation's BizTalk and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol). It enables the transfer of a self-describing collection of objects and associated files between two systems. Created by SmarTeam for deployment in its collaborative product commerce (CPC) solutions, iXF is most suitable for sharing product and plant item geometry (drawings and CAD models) and product or plant item content (meta data) by transferring data and metadata from one iXF-enabled system to another.

"Traditionally, the huge amount of information associated with product design is stored and controlled by conventional product data management (PDM) systems, which manage design information and files primarily within engineering departments," stated Avichay Nissenbaum, Smart Solutions' Vice President of Product Marketing. "Today, the product development process crosses departmental and enterprise boundaries and includes customers and suppliers in the process. The iXF standard will enable faster, more accurate and standards-based product content exchange throughout the value network, streamlining the product development collaboration cycle."

The iXF format enables the integration of product data stored in a SmarTeam database with existing legacy systems, and facilitates the exchange of information between organizational departments and across a supply chain. iXF can be independently extended and customized to meet specific business requirements, enabling any two parties to utilize iXF to define a common language between them, creating a virtual, seamless partnership. Internet- based standards enable easy transportation and simplify integration with other existing systems.

About Smart Solutions Ltd.

Smart Solutions Ltd., a Dassault Systemes S.A. company, develops and markets rapidly implemented, yet totally customizable, Windows and Web-centric collaborative product commerce (CPC) and product data management (PDM) solutions between teams, within the enterprise and throughout the supply chain. Smart Solutions was founded in 1995 and is one of the fastest-growing companies in the data management market with over 1,400 customers worldwide. SmarTeam's broad solutions portfolio enables small-to-medium-sized manufacturing organizations and their supply chains to efficiently exchange, track and manage design information related to product development from concept to realization. SmarTeam's solutions help companies gain improvements in product quality, reduce costs, expedite project turnaround, comply with industry standards and shorten-time-to-market.

For more information, contact: SmarTeam Inc., Smart Solutions' American subsidiary. SmarTeam Inc., 900 Cummings Center, Suite 307T, Beverly, Mass. 01915, tel: 978-524-1950. E-mail: info@smarteam.com, or visit the company's website at http://www.smarteam.com.

SOURCE SmarTeam Inc.
Web Site: http://www.smarteam.com http://www.ixfstd.org

Prepared by Robin Cover for The XML Cover Pages archive. See discussion.

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