Internet Shopping Software Wins Best of Systems 96

Rainer Mauth

An innovative, out-of-the-box on-line-shopping software package won BYTE's Best of Show award at Systems 96. This award recognizes an important and innovative new product shown at the annual computing-solutions-and-technology show held in Munich.

Voted by BYTE editors as the best of the best new products, NetConsult Communications ' (+49 3641 8940; http://intershop.net ) Intershop Online is a comple te template-based on-line-shopping solution that can handle inven tory, billing, shipping, and marketing statistics. Its latest extension, the Intershop Mall, which was announced at the show, enables users to manage a variety of on-line shops side by side on one Web server.

An on-line customer, for example, can select merchandise from a wide variety of shops, just like in a real shopping mall. With the Intershop Mall extension, Internet service providers (ISPs) can easily administer stores for many different merchants. They can control customer-access rights, log in orders, and keep an up-to-date record of payment transactions.

BYTE editors awarded the multimedia prize to the Virtual Assembly technology from the Fraunhofer Institut für Arbeitswirtschaft und Organisation (+49 711 970 2087; Andreas.Roessler@iao.fhg.de). This high-end virtual-reality system simulates the interaction of a human body with objects in cyberspace. It uses a sophisticated virtual model of the human body to simulate the assembly and maintenance of machines that do not yet exist, giving the user tactile feedback during the maintenance tests.

The best communications product the BYTE editors saw on the Munich show floor was Tobit Software's (+49 2561 913 120; http://www.tobit.com ) David , a universal inbox for all kinds of business correspondence. This communications-server software for NetWare LANs manages and archives e-mail, faxes, voice messages, and all other types of multimedia documents. The software provides access to these complex documents via LAN, phone, fax on demand, or a Web browser.

Network Distributed ISDN for W indows NT , developed by AVM (+49 30 39976 0; http://www.avm.de ), clinched the title in the Corporate Networking Products category. This communications software package allows an unlimited number of network users to share one or more ISDN controllers. With this program, each LAN workstation gets its own virtual ISDN interface without being physically connected to the ISDN network.

The honors for Best Business Management Solution went to ISD/Professor Scheer's (+49 681 9921 0; ids@ids-scheer.de) Aris Applications , which is the latest component of the Aris business-process-engineering tool set, for its high level of application, process, and work-flow integration. Aris Ap plications generates stand-alone applications directly from operative work-flow models.

The winner in the Industrial Applications category was TS Technische Software's (+49 711 77970; http://www.ts-software.de ) Guard IV , a quality-management system that supports production-process control. The software package has the ability to handle a variety of events and exceptions that standard production-planning systems cannot cover and thus makes factory work flow more secure.

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Go to the Mall...at Home

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Intershop Online lets you set up a shopping mall on the Internet.