REDMOND, Wash., and ATLANTA, Nov. 6, 2000 — Microsoft Corp. and Clarus Corp. today announced that Clarus will support the Microsoft® E-Business Acceleration initiative. The initiative is designed to enable a broader range of suppliers to adopt business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce, leveraging new sales channels through e-marketplaces and buy-side applications. As a result of this initiative, any supplier, regardless of size or complexity, will be able to easily connect through marketplaces powered by Clarus as a value-added sales channel.
In addition, Clarus joins other industry leaders as a founding member of the Microsoft E-Business Acceleration Advisory Council, which is designed to provide a unique opportunity for suppliers, market-makers, partners and Microsoft to learn from one another, particularly in the supplier enablement space. The council will spearhead the creation of a supplier guide, technical integration and vendor-supplier certification programs. Clarus will play a significant role on the council in platform integration, which is a key factor as suppliers embrace B2B e-commerce solution sets.
As part of the E-Business Acceleration initiative, Clarus will contribute to the development of Microsoft’s newly announced Supplier Accelerator. Supplier Accelerator is a set of tools and extensions to Microsoft’s core e-business servers — BizTalk™ Server, Commerce Server and SQL Server™ — that reduce the complexity and investment required to connect to Clarus and other leading e-marketplaces. As part of Supplier Accelerator, the companies will jointly develop a connector that utilizes Microsoft BizTalk Server 2000 to map catalog and order information from Microsoft Commerce Server 2000 to Clarus-based e-marketplaces. This connector will be utilized by bCentral™
to extend the newly announced bCentral Commerce Manager to Clarus-based e-marketplaces, enabling this same empowerment and reach for small suppliers as well.
“This cooperation validates the Clarus business model of building e-commerce applications that are truly open and interoperable,”
said Steve Jeffery, chairman and CEO of Clarus.
“The E-Business Acceleration initiative will allow suppliers to quickly realize the tremendous benefits associated with the B2B economy, based on significantly reduced time and financial investments required to get up and running.”
The full Clarus product suite leverages the Microsoft .NET Enterprise Server platform, evidence of Clarus’ continuing commitment to the latest Microsoft technology products and initiatives. Clarus eMarket is the first digital marketplace framework designed for the Microsoft Windows® 2000 operating system, Commerce Server 2000 and BizTalk Server 2000, taking advantage of the B2B infrastructure delivered with these robust new Microsoft technologies to offer significant speed-to-market advantages.
“Creating a seamless transition and scalable framework is critical in delivering a solution that will benefit rapid industry adoption and help create supplier participation in marketplaces,”
said Chris Atkinson, vice president of the .NET Enterprise Solutions Group at Microsoft.
“Clarus, through its support of the E-Business Acceleration initiative, is able to extend its leading solutions to provide customers with easy-to-utilize supplier connectivity, better enabling suppliers of any size to connect to any marketplace.”
Clarus’ customers already see this initiative as a tool to help them achieve their business objectives. AvidXchange, based in Charlotte, N.C., is a net market-maker focused on commercial real estate operations.
“Eighty percent of the suppliers in our business model are small to medium-sized companies that are very local in nature,”
said David Miller, president of AvidXchange.
“Being able to seamlessly integrate these suppliers into our marketplace allows us to expand our business more quickly than originally anticipated. The combination of the Clarus marketplace framework and the Microsoft .NET server platform provides us with the ability to rapidly scale our business in a cost-effective manner.”
About the Microsoft E-Business Acceleration Initiative
E-Business Acceleration is a joint initiative of Microsoft and its partners to help businesses of any size take advantage of B2B opportunities. By providing a seamless path for connecting suppliers of any size to a variety of e-marketplaces and other channels, the E-Business Acceleration initiative helps businesses meet their immediate needs, while building on a scalable solution that offers migration to more powerful technologies to accommodate growth. This end-to-end enablement offers suppliers tools to access and manage their channels, added reach into untapped markets, and new, expanded sales opportunities, producing a solution that can connect any supplier to any marketplace.
About Clarus
Atlanta-based Clarus Corp. ( http://www.claruscorp.com/ ; Nasdaq
“CLRS”
), a leader in B2B e-commerce, provides B2B procurement software and trading services that exploit the global marketplace of the Internet to manage corporate purchasing and enable digital marketplaces. ClarusNet, a fully managed service portal, provides a comprehensive range of critical trading services such as payment settlement, supplier enablement, auctions, integration and analytics. Designed to provide unprecedented interoperability, ClarusNet enhances the value and speeds delivery of any B2B trading platform including Clarus eProcurement and Clarus eMarket. Microsoft recently honored Clarus with one of the highest awards possible as the Microsoft Global E-Commerce Solution of the Year. Clarus solutions are being deployed at customer sites including Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., Cinergy, Comcast Corp., AvidXchange, Gjensidige NOR, MasterCard International, MetLife, Parsons Brinckerhoff, Perot Systems and Wachovia.
About Microsoft
Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq
“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software — any time, any place and on any device.
This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of section 27a of the securities act of 1933 and section 21e of the exchange act. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risks including that the benefits expected by the company as a result of this announcement may not occur.
Microsoft, BizTalk, bCentral and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.
The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.
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