By signing new licensees for its B2B software, Fairfax, Virginia- based WebMethods Inc is driving the adoption of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)’s Extensible Markup Language (XML) as a standard e-commerce file format. Dun & Bradstreet, Marshall Industries, Security First, the Washington Post and CareerPath have each said they will use B2B to provide information to their suppliers, partners and customers through a single web-based application. D&B and Marshall Industries are also using the software to integrate ERP, EDI and legacy applications. In a similar way, 3Com is using B2B to integrate its applications with those of its suppliers and thus improve product inventory management, while HP has adopted B2B as a means of passing orders to suppliers.
