Object Design relaunches itself as Excelon

Object Design relaunched itself this week as Excelon and at the same time unveiled plans to focus on its eponymous line of XML (Extensible Markup Language) server software.

The firm's ObjectStore database, which has about 40 per cent of the global market for object databases, acts as the underlying technology for the Excelon family. Apart from this, Object Design will continue to sell the two product lines separately.

Robert Goldman, Excelon's president and chief executive, said: "The rapidly growing market for Internet business to business software represents a major opportunity for our company. We have aligned the entire organisation to serve this market with the industry's most innovative B2B solutions."

The supplier plans to ship its B2B Integration Server, which runs on Windows NT and Solaris, in March. The aim of the $75,000 offering is to enable companies with systems using different versions of XML to communicate and conduct business electronically.

The Server includes graphical tools for designing business processes and XML templates for building business forms.

Other members of the B2B product line include eSolutions components for use in vertical industries such as insurance, retail and manufacturing, and the Dynamic Application Platform, an XML based development environment for building and deploying ebusiness packages.

Steve Garone, IDC's programme director for Application Development & Deployment, said: "XML is truly the 'secret sauce' in an explosive market that is attracting a considerable amount of interest from vendors looking to gain an advantage over their competitors."