XML SOLUTIONS

Acquired by Vitria Technologies, 2001

XML Solutions was created by a group of entrepreneurs in late 1999. Their vision was to develop software that would enable small and medium sized vendors to participate as suppliers in electronic transactions with larger companies. This meant that the small and medium sized vendors had to interface with the EDI transaction systems that were used by the larger companies. At the time, such a system would involve investment in expensive software and transaction equipment at vendor premises.

Business Need

XML Solutions wanted a platform for business document translation and transformation, trading partner and workflow management, and secure transport of data.

The platform is an XML to EDI conversion tool that would enable low-cost EDI equipment to be used at vendor premises that would convert transactions to the proper EDI format for the systems used at larger companies. Responses sent back to the vendors would be in a form suitable for reading by low-cost EDI equipment.

Solution Offered

LisleTech created several products for XML Solution. The Exeter XML Server combined several Open Source components to provide an XML-based content delivery system. LisleTech invented XMLZip technology, which applied ZIP compression to XML documents. LisleTech designed and implemented XML Solutions. flagship product, the XEDI Translator. This product eliminated EDI and XML dialect dependencies and resulted in uniform transactions among customers of all sizes, thereby removing trading barriers.

Technology Highlights

A Java application, the XEDI translator uses completely open standards. The product developed includes support for EDI-to-XML translation, XML-to-XML transformations and could handle over 3000 mission-critical business specific EDI business documents.

Engagement Model

Equity client. XML Solutions raised a total of $25 million in venture funding. LisleTech functioned as the entire engineering team of XML Solutions until the XEDI Translator was developed and tested at various installations. Upon acquisition by Vitria, LisleTech continued to provide maintenance and enhancement services until the Vitria Technologies team could take over these functions.