Breakthrough Electronic Commerce Service from Harbinger Uses the World Wide Web for Business-to-Business Trading.ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 9, 1996-- Harbinger Express makes simple, inexpensive EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) The electronic communication of business transactions, such as orders, confirmations and invoices, between organizations. Third parties provide EDI services that enable organizations with different equipment to connect. a reality Harbinger(TM) Corporation (NASDAQ NASDAQ in full National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations U.S. market for over-the-counter securities. Established in 1971 by the National Association of Securities Dealers (NASD), NASDAQ is an automated quotation system that reports on :HRBC HRBC Human Resources Business Center (US Army) ), today announced a new Internet-based service that enables companies to use a Web browser The program that serves as your front end to the Web on the Internet. In order to view a site, you type its address (URL) into the browser's Location field; for example, www.computerlanguage.com, and the home page of that site is downloaded to you. to exchange business documents with trading partners. The service automatically translates the documents between HTML HTML in full HyperText Markup Language Markup language derived from SGML that is used to prepare hypertext documents. Relatively easy for nonprogrammers to master, HTML is the language used for documents on the World Wide Web. and standard electronic data interchange See EDI. (application, communications) electronic data interchange - (EDI) The exchange of standardised document forms between computer systems for business use. EDI is part of electronic commerce. (EDI) formats, eliminating much of the complexity and cost of traditional EDI software. (Also today, Harbinger announced the release of its TrustedLink(TM) Guardian software, designed to allow companies with EDI translation software to send their documents via the Internet as well as their current valued-added networks. Details of this announcement are carried in a separate press release.) "Web-based EDI products, like Harbinger Express, will be a breakthrough for companies wishing to greatly expand their EDI programs," says Suzanne J. Gregory, Business Systems Manager, EDI/ Electronic Commerce, Systems Group, Texas Instruments See TI. (company) Texas Instruments - (TI) A US electronics company. A TI engineer, Jack Kilby invented the integrated circuit in 1958. Three TI employees left the company in 1982 to start Compaq. . Harbinger Express allows users to read and respond to business documents such as purchase orders and invoices using Netscape Navigator An earlier Web browser for Windows, Macintosh and X Windows from Netscape that provided secure transmission over the Internet. Soon after its introduction in 1994, Navigator, or just "Netscape," as it was commonly called, quickly became the leading browser on the Web. (TM) or Microsoft(R) Internet Explorer. Until now, companies have been required to license special EDI translation software and subscribe to value-added networks. With Harbinger Express, users simply connect to the Harbinger Express Web site (http://harbx.net) to view incoming documents or initiate a transaction. Behind the scenes the forms are generated from incoming EDI documents into HTML code. The user just sees the forms as typical Web pages. Thus, any incoming EDI message - for example, a purchase order sent by a Fortune 500 company - instantly becomes a familiar document. Companies can also automatically respond to a document - for example remit an invoice or advance ship notice - using a browser. All transactions are secure, using industry-standard data encryption techniques. Harbinger Express translates and transmits the document using the Internet or the larger company's value-added network. In this way, both trading partners benefit: The larger company receives documents in the desired EDI format; the smaller partner gets a simple, low-cost Web EDI solution. The combination works to solidify the business relationship and has the potential for increasing profits on both sides. "EDI can save money for everyone in the supply chain by shortening lead times and reducing the administrative inefficiencies that come with manually entering data into computer systems," says Steve Youngblood, Harbinger Senior Product Manager. "It also opens the door between smaller companies and the 95-plus percent of all Fortune 1000 firms which require some form of EDI." "With Harbinger Express we can serve companies that have until now resisted EDI because of cost or complexity issues," said Tycho Howle, Chairman and CEO (1) (Chief Executive Officer) The highest individual in command of an organization. Typically the president of the company, the CEO reports to the Chairman of the Board. of Harbinger. "Companies that need to exchange fewer that 15 EDI messages per month can now do so affordably. Nearly three million businesses in the U.S. alone fall into this category. We can now enable any company to take advantage of EDI: Harbinger Express for low volume needs; TrustedLink(TM) Commerce, our Windows desktop EDI solution for companies with greater trading volume Trading volume The number of shares transacted every day. As there is a seller for every buyer, one can think of the trading volume as half of the number of shares transacted. That is, if A sells 100 shares to B, the volume is 100 shares. ; and TrustedLink Enterprise for high volume transactions on MVS (Multiple Virtual Storage) Introduced in 1974, the primary operating system used with IBM mainframes (the others are VM and DOS/VSE). MVS is a batch processing-oriented operating system that manages large amounts of memory and disk space. (R), AS/400(R), Windows NT(R), or UNIX UNIX Operating system for digital computers, developed by Ken Thompson of Bell Laboratories in 1969. It was initially designed for a single user (the name was a pun on the earlier operating system Multics). computers." Pricing and Availability Harbinger has already begun piloting the Harbinger Express electronic commerce service. As more major trading partners add their business forms to Harbinger Express, it will support additional trading communities. Various pricing plans will be available. A small business user will pay a $495 set-up fee to register with its hub company plus a $29.95 monthly fee, which will include up to 15 business transactions. Additional documents will be charged at $1.50 per transaction. Companies which typically exchange fewer than 15 transactions per month will realize significant savings over traditional EDI programs. About Harbinger Corporation Harbinger Corporation is one of the largest electronic commerce providers in the world, with an installed base of its end-user software of 24,000 and more than 30,000 active mailboxes on its value-added network. In addition to millions of EDI transactions, over $1.5 billion in Automated Clearing House See ACH. (ACH) transfers flow through the Harbinger Network each month. Since 1988, Harbinger has been dedicated to providing the electronic commerce industry with comprehensive EC/EDI EC/EDI Electronic Commerce/Electronic Data Interchange software solutions for all major platforms, including MVS mainframes, AS/400 and UNIX, NT, midrange systems, and Windows and DOS personal computers. Harbinger's corporate headquarters are located in Atlanta, Harbinger's Enterprise Solutions Division is headquartered in Dallas, and the company's European operations are in several countries including The Netherlands and Germany. -0- NOTE TO EDITORS: Harbinger and TrustedLink are trademarks of Harbinger Corporation. All other company and product names referenced herein are registered trademarks or trademarks of their respective owners. Prices subject to change. CONTACT: Rebecca L. Metzger -or- Andy Hagedon Harbinger Corporation GCI/Atlanta 404/841-4334 404/870-3829 rmetzger@harbinger.com ahagedon@gcigroup.com Internet: www.harbinger.com |
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