US Web marketing software vendor BroadVision Inc yesterday announced the next major upgrade of its relationship management system, One-To-One. Alongside the launch, some 30 partners, including industry heavyweights IBM Corp, Oracle Corp and Sun Microsystems Inc, came together to announce support for the software. Sandra Vaughan, VP marketing for BroadVision said One- To-One Enterprise version 4 features four main enhancements to the existing system. Firstly, it increases time to market dramatically by making it easier for developers to customize their applications, she said. In the previous version, developers wanting to customize the application had to program the software in C++, which was time consuming. But version 4 lets them use server-side Java script, which is quicker and easier to use and much quicker to test, she said. Secondly, BroadVision has made it easier for non-technical staff to drive the process and create the rules within the programs that dictate who sees what based on user profiles. In the past, all the data was held within back-end systems and needed to be uploaded into a separate database that ran the BroadVision system. But Command Center version 4 lets programmers access the data directly, which speeds up the process. The third main difference is a 20% increase in performance over the previous release. Version 4 allows caching of information by content, not just by individual users’ likes and dislikes. Now, the software can store the most frequently accessed web pages in cache memory to improve performance. But Vaughan said the biggest focus of the new release is to make the software more easy to integrate with third party front and back office applications. In the front office space, the company said it was partnering with Aspect Telecommunications to integrate its call center technology into One-To-One by the first quarter of 1999. And it will add voice recognition functionality via an alliance with Nuance some time in the first half of 1999. For backoffice ERP and financial application integration, BroadVision said it would work with companies like Deloitte and Touche, KPMG, Tibco, Bea Systems and IBM, among others, to deliver integrated solutions throughout 1999. The idea, said Vaughan, is to develop packaged, off-the-shelf applications to enable users to link into their back office systems quickly and easily without having to spend months customizing their existing applications to work with One-To-One. รก
