REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 19, 2002 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that Emery Forwarding, a provider of time-definite global transportation services and a component of Menlo Worldwide, has chosen Microsoft® BizTalk®
Server and its enterprise application integration (EAI) capabilities for the company’s delivery alert solution, which enables event notification of real-time activity on customers’ shipments. Windows Powered Pocket PCs allow Emery to send shipment information from its drivers to Emery’s legacy systems. Then, using BizTalk Server, real-time shipping information, such as expected delivery time and notice of any delays, is sent to Emery’s customers via e-mail, telephone or another medium they choose, giving Emery and its customers unprecedented business agility.
“Our customers wanted real-time data access and more proactive information about shipments, and we knew we needed a solution that could be implemented quickly and easily to solve this problem,”
said Ronald W. Berger, managing director of information systems for Emery at Menlo Worldwide Technologies.
“Using BizTalk Server, we can easily integrate and leverage our legacy messaging systems into any format in which our customers choose to receive this mission-critical information. The Microsoft platform, including BizTalk Server and Pocket PC, offered all the proven enterprise technologies we needed to pull together such a comprehensive solution.”
Historically, Emery has been able to collect information about shipments, but the information was locked up in legacy systems and proprietary messaging formats. Emery needed to move to a more flexible system, one that leveraged new Internet protocols, such as XML, and mobile technologies, in order to quickly build a mobile infrastructure that could collect shipping and delivery information for its customers in real time. Now armed with Pocket PCs, Emery drivers can enter information into their devices whenever they pick up or drop off a shipment, and that information is sent to Emery’s legacy systems. Leveraging existing investments in its proprietary IBM MQSeries messaging system, Emery pulls that information together internally, picking it up with the BizTalk Adapter for MQSeries, and sends it to customers using BizTalk Server. The combination provides Emery with the best economic solution because it incorporates existing technologies while moving the company toward a more flexible, standards-based solution using the Microsoft platform.
“Emery saw an opportunity to engage more deeply with its customers and used Microsoft technology to provide it with the ability to turn opportunity into competitive advantage,”
said Dave Wascha, lead product manager for BizTalk Server at Microsoft.
“This EAI solution demonstrates the inherent benefits of building with Microsoft’s comprehensive platform for enterprise applications. Companies looking for a faster return on investment using dependable, Internet-based technologies are finding Microsoft to be the perfect fit.”
Using XML, SOAP and other core Internet transports and protocols, BizTalk Server unites EAI, B2B and business process management technology in a single product to allow companies to easily orchestrate Web services and rapidly build dynamic business processes that span applications, platforms and businesses.
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