Object Design Records Three New eBusiness Successes With Deployments At Kasumi, Loot.com and MarketXT

Business Wire, Nov 10, 1999

BURLINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 10, 1999--

eCommerce, Retail And Finance Businesses Go Live With Help

From ODI's ObjectStore And Javlin

Object Design, Inc. (Nasdaq:ODIS), a global provider of innovative eBusiness products and solutions, today announced that Kasumi, loot.com and MarketXT, have selected ODI products to build and deploy innovative mission-critical eBusiness applications.

Kasumi, Japan's largest supermarket, home center and restaurant chain, is using ODI's Javlin Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) data server to power a new Java-based application that will link the company's 100-plus supermarkets, enabling managers from each store to manage inventory more effectively. Javlin-based servers, each accessed by point of sale and graphic order terminals through wireless LAN, will be placed at company headquarters and in each store. Javlin will cache and distribute data in the middle tier, offering extra speed and scalablity to end-users.

"We chose Javlin because of its excellent performance capabilities when serving as the data server for large-scale EJB applications," said Takashi Kambayashi, system planning project leader for Kasumi. "We are trying to manage more than 100 supermarkets. For this, we needed a system that could track and manage thousands of inventories and sales records. We chose Javlin to run in concert with BEA's WebLogic application server because we knew it would improve our application's performance. For us, the bottom line is increased profitability, and we see Javlin as the best means of achieving it."

loot.com, the UK's leading classified advertisement Web site, will deploy ObjectStore as the platform for its next-generation Web system, SuperSite. The newly developed SuperSite will enable loot.com to accept XML data, allowing the site to seamlessly integrate content from new partners and affiliates, enhancing the services offered to its users. ObjectStore provides the SuperSite project with a state-of-the-art suite of robust and scalable products to provide a flexible, high-performance, industrial-strength application. The redesigned site is due to go live in January 2000.

"With our ambitious development plans in place, we needed a system that would not only offer us the flexibility and extensibility to add new services online, but to also ensure that the look and feel of the site remained the same," said Paul Broome, information technology director, LOOT Group. "Unlike other Web product offerings, ObjectStore is a low-cost highly scalable product. Object Design has an impeccable track record in the implementation of high-performance Web site applications."

MarketXT, a New York-based after-hours online trading service, is deploying an after-hours online trading application, built on ODI's ObjectStore data management system. The application gives individuals the ability to trade outside the Stock Exchange operating hours, at their own convenience. MarketXT has partnered with leading Wall Street firms to provide liquidity to the system and protective measures for investors in the after-hours market. What's unique about MarketXT's application is that it allows investors to view a complete list of orders as well as check the status of their own orders via the Internet. This means that the MarketXT investor has access to the same information as professional investors.

"We chose ObjectStore because it was an obvious fit from the start," said Craig Vorselen, chief technology officer at MarketXT. "Our goals were rapid development, ease of use and maintenance, and ObjectStore provided all three. We evaluated several competing object-oriented databases, but ObjectStore was clearly the one that was going to push our application into the front of the online trading field."

About Kasumi Group

Kasumi Group operates supermarkets and shopping centers in the northern Kanto area of Japan. The company is also involved in restaurants, leisure and financial services, and is dedicated to providing high-quality services that meet customers' demands in a timely manner. Although each affiliate of the group is independently run, the Kasumi Group companies are organically connected.

About loot.com

loot.com (www.loot.com) was launched in 1996 and is the online version of the LOOT free ads newspaper. More than 300,000 ads every week in over 400 classifications are posted on the site. loot.com was the first UK site to offer online auctions and is the only UK site which offers this facility completely free of charge. All advertisements from LOOT's paper, the world's largest A to Z of PAPER classified advertisements, also appear in the online version. In addition, Internet users can post adverts online. All adverts are subject to an ethical editorial policy which aims to ensure that all content is legal, decent, honest and truthful. Each advert is individually hand typed to ensure the integrity of the advertisement. loot.com has won numerous awards, including the 1999 New Media Age Effectiveness Awards for Best Consumer Publisher on the Web, the Rubicon Award for innovation and design in April 1999, and the PPA Magazine in May 1998.