[Archive copy mirrored from: http://www.balise.com/current/novell.htm]
AIS Software, the software development division of Berger-Levrault/AIS, today announced a deal which gives network software giant Novell worldwide access to the Balise SGML and text conversion software, AIS Software's flagship product.
The agreement includes both software products and support and takes immediate effect. It applies to all Novell divisions, affiliates and partners worldwide. Novell will use Balise as a key component in a multi-client, SGML-based internal corporate production system for printed and electronic documentation, which will be deployed throughout several Novell locations and subsidiaries worldwide. Novell selected Balise after a careful competitive evaluation study, conducted over an extended period of time.
"In our evaluation, Balise performed as well if not better than the other tools we tested in both functionality and performance," said Wayne Taylor, Tools Development Manager at Novell's Corporate Publishing Services. "In addition, the ability of Balise to handle double-byte characters met key requirements for many of our international and multilingual projects."
"Drawing upon our experiences creating varied conversion filters using a number of industry-standard SGML parsing tools, we feel that Balise has the necessary functionality to meet all of our conversion needs." explained Alan Murray, a Novell Software Engineer. "Balise's open SDK and native support for relational database connectivity through its ODBC interface will prove most useful when integrating the conversion modules in our global production system."
"I am very pleased that Balise was chosen by Novell, precisely because their decision was based on a thorough and rigorous evaluation process", said Christophe Lécluse, AIS Software's manager. "I was very impressed by the professionalism with which the Novell team benchmarked Balise.It took some time, but it was worthwile, and I am now quite confident that we will have a very constructive working relationship with Novell".
"We are very proud that AIS Software's flagship product has been judged worthy to become part of a mission-critical SGML documentation system in the fifth largest software company in the world!" declared François Chahuneau, AIS' General Manager. "The Balise two-level deployment architecture and licensing scheme were intentionally designed to meet the needs of large scale corporate projects. I am pleased to see that Novell perceived this as a clear advantage.", he added.
Balise is an SGML application programming environment, used to build information exchange and translation systems between various forms of SGML information storage and representation. The Balise system was designed to be open, extensible and embeddable. The Balise language itself is a modern, powerful and efficient scripting language offering many features to handle text in general, and specialized features to handle SGML structures under multiple representations (parsing events, trees, etc.).
AIS Software develops and markets the Balise product line, which is distributed worldwide through partners and resellers. Founded in 1988, AIS (Advanced Information Systems) is a leading European software and services provider in the area of structured document management and publishing systems, and more specifically in applications of the SGML ISO standard. The company, which employs a staff of more that 30 people, is a fully-owned subsidiary of French Group Berger-Levrault.
Founded in 1983, Novell is the world's leading provider of network software. The company offers a wide range of network solutions for distributed network, Internet/Intranet and small-business markets, as well as groupware and management solutions.
AIS Software
15 - 17 Rue Rémy Dumoncel
F-75014 Paris
France
Tel: (+33) 1 40 64 43 00 Fax: (+33) 1 40 64 43 10 email: info@balise.com