Intel turns B2B into B2-wheee
Intel Corp. plans to unveil two network devices on Monday that can make business-to-business transactions over the Internet 150 times faster than previously possible.
ZDNet News
SAN FRANCISCO, 07 May 2000 - In the latest growth push from its communications products business, Intel Corp. said the devices will take some of the data processing load off network servers. The products will be targeted to data centers and other application service providers offering services over the Web.
The Intel NetStructure 7280 XML Director and the 7210 XML Accelerator are in pilot tests with a handful of business-to-business companies. They are the latest addition to a family of e-commerce products that seek to speed up business, first launched in February at the Intel Developer Forum.
"We are making products for the e-business data centers," said John Miner, Intel's vice president and general manager of the company's communications products group. "As they rush to get e-commerce capabilities in place, one of the problems these companies face is they want to make sure that the transactions get completed."
Both devices are based on XML (extensible markup language), which is evolving into a standard format for structured documents like invoices, purchase orders, and other documents that are used in business-to-business transactions, just as HTML (hypertext markup language) became the standard for designing Web pages.
Intel said both its Intel NetStructure 7280 XML Director and the 7210 XML Accelerator devices will ship in quantity in the middle of the year. Both devices accelerate and control secure XML-based Internet transactions, for faster electronic commerce.