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Full Integration Between Best-of-Breed Vendors Wednesday
7 June 2000 SHERMAN
OAKS, CALIFORNIA — A
group of leading suppliers to the publishing industry today announced
support for a new standard in technology platforms. Called “Clickpub”,
the standard specifies integration of Web front-end systems, such as
content management and e-commerce, with back-end systems, such as
periodical fulfillment. Until
now, there has been no agreement on how to integrate legacy systems used
in the publishing industry with the latest tools in rich Web
functionality. “This
is the dawn of the third phase in Web publishing technology,” said Mark
Mathias, president of EurekaDIGITAL, one of the initiators of the
standard. “The first phase was brochureware. The second brought robust
content management, personalization and e-commerce. This new third phase
ties all these functions to the legacy systems publishers rely on to
produce the bulk of their offline revenues.” Standards
committee for the new technology platform consisted of representatives
from key suppliers: fulfillment software vendor Datasystem Solutions
(Shawnee Mission, KS), wireless data and systems integrator EurekaDIGITAL
(Burbank, CA), and leading publishing-industry application service
provider APDI (Camp Springs, MD). “We’re
enabling publishers of all sizes to meld best-of-breed applications while
maintaining the unique business rules that define each publisher’s
business,” said Tim Baskerville, chair of Clickpub Alliance, the new
organization formed to administer the standard. Said
Baskerville: “We embrace the building-block standards that have powered
Web publishing integration thus far, from XML to ODBC. Now we want to take
interoperability the final mile with Clickpub.” The
Clickpub steering committee also announced support for Connectpub,
middleware that provides a bridge to applications that do not inherently
interoperate with Clickpub in their “out of the box” configuration. Although
Clickpub-compatible modules are available from vendors on both a turnkey
and remote-hosting model, the maximum functionality of all systems is
enhanced by using an application service provider (“rent an app”)
vendor certified as Clickpub-compliant. In
announcing the standard, the Clickpub Alliance listed the initial group of
applications that are being made interoperable, either directly or through
middleware: Data
Finds You (APDI), EurekaNET (EurekaDIGITAL), Internet Explorer
(Microsoft), Largo (APDI), Multipub (Datasystem Solutions), Navigator
(Netscape), NetVerify (CyberCash), Portable Document Format (Adobe),
PostalSoft (FirstLogic), Subscription Fulfillment System (ARGI), Transact
(Open Market). The
Clickpub Alliance endorsed the standard to, in its words, “jumpstart a
new era in Web infrastructure development.” Because vendors supporting
the standard already serve thousands of publishers with complementary
applications, Clickpub is expected to be adopted quickly by publishers of
magazines, newsletters, books, reports, documents and other formats. Clickpub addresses the need to tie together web site design, personalization, search, e-mail messaging, content management, digital and non-digital delivery, subscription tracking, pay-per-article and special bundling, split-pricing, promotion-tracking, legacy fullfillment systems, accounting and reporting. Clickpub Alliance ### White papers | Presentations [executive speeches] | Sign-up for email newsletter (to come)
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