October 1999, Vol. 16, No. 9 News Briefs PATTERN RECOGNITION Visa and CyberSource team up to on Internet fraud screening solution Visa U.S.A. (Foster City, Calif.; www.visa.com) and CyberSource Corporation (San Jose, Calif. www.cybersource.com), a developer and provider of e-commerce transaction and fraud detection services, have entered into an agreement to jointly develop and promote the CyberSource Internet Fraud Screen enhanced by Visa. The two companies will collaborate to expand the capabilities of the existing CyberSource Internet Fraud Screen, leveraging Visa's fraud modeling expertise and CyberSource's Internet fraud reduction experience and historical transaction database. The new product, CyberSource Internet Fraud Screen enhanced by Visa, will be promoted and marketed to Visa's Member financial institutions and Internet merchants. The CyberSource Internet Fraud Screen enhanced by Visa uses data validation, artificial intelligence pattern matching, network data aggregation and negative file checks as it examines more than 150 different factors to calculate the risk of fraud associated with an online purchase. INTELLIGENT AGENTS Artificial Life and PricewaterhouseCoopers to develop online banking agents Artificial Life Inc. (Boston; www.artificial-life.com), a provider of intelligent software robots for the Internet, has signed an agreement with PricewaterhouseCoopers Unternehmensberatung GmbH (Berlin; www.pwcglobal.com) for a close cooperation in the development and introduction of new technology for e-business. The first intelligent software bot products, to be released at the end of 1999, will focus on the simplification of online banking. They will be capable of acting as a portfolio and fund manager. Cooperatively, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Artificial Life will invest in the development of both sector-specific and multifunctional products. PricewaterhouseCoopers will acquire licenses for all Artificial Life products released in 1999 and 2000 in order to strengthen PricewaterhouseCoopers' own internal knowledge and information management. AlphaServ.com and Quote.com continue development of stock tracking agent AlphaServ.com (Santa Ana, Calif.; www.alphaserv.com), a provider of multi-vendor and professional IT services, has enhanced its content agreement with Quote.com (Mountain View, Calif.; www.quote.com), a network for electronic investing , with the launch of the fourth generation of its AlphaCONNECT StockVue investment-tracking agent. Designed for individual investors and investment professionals, StockVue 2000 is a desktop PC application, which retrieves many types of information on stocks and mutual funds, such as quotes, market research, investment tips and discussion board postings through multiple sources on the Internet. The product manages content for its investor users from sources including: Quote.com, Zacks, Market Guide and Edgar Online. New features of StockVue 2000 provide users with built-in access to dynamic investor resources, including discussion groups, Quote.com's Investor Education Center and information on the latest IPOs from Quote.com's IPO Edge. EXPERT SYSTEMS Lucent and Siebel ally to deliver CRM solutions Lucent Technologies (Murray Hill, N.J.; www.lucent.com) and Siebel Systems (San Mateo, Calif.; www.siebel.com) announced an alliance to integrate Siebel's front office software with Lucent's customer care and workflow management telephony solutions. One of the product's features will be intelligent routing of customer inquiries to the right resource. Every customer inquiry will be automatically matched to the most appropriate agent or resource. Using predictive algorithms, the expert system software will make real-time decisions based on customer requests, service levels and agent skill, availability and workload. Siebel Systems and Lucent will jointly sell and market these integrated solutions worldwide, as well as work with systems integrators. Syntellect signs reseller agreement with Xantel Corporation Syntellect, Inc. (Phoenix, Ariz.; www.syntellect.com), a provider of call center technology and hosted service solutions, announced that it has signed a strategic reseller agreement with Xantel Corporation (Phoenix, Ariz.; www.xantel.com), manufacturer of a call distribution solution. The product, called Connex 80/20 PCD (Precision Call Distribution), relies on a rules-based engine to ensure that the 20 percent of customers responsible for 80 percent of corporate revenue always receive the best possible service from call center agents. Connex 80/20 PCD identifies high-value customers using ANI, DNIS, account numbers or PINs, and routes callers instantly and automatically to agents empowered with the training and tools needed to ensure the highest possible personalized attention. With Connex 80/20, Syntellect customers can now offer their high-value customers personalized greetings and on-hold messages based on pre-established rules. CSRs will be able to create and modify these rules based on the changing needs of customers through a desktop application, that also provides easy access to any information resource anywhere in the enterprise. This application also empowers CSRs to manage multiple calls concurrently. StartupNetwork.com secures privacy accreditation from TRUSTe StartupNetwork.com(Brookline, Mass.; www.startupnetwork.com), an online recruitment site for high tech startups, announced that TRUSTe (Cupertino, Calif.; www.truste.org), a non-profit privacy seal program dedicated to building security and confidence on the Internet, has issued StartupNetwork.com its TRUSTe Trustmark, thereby approving StartupNetwork.com's Website privacy policy. StartupNetwork.com serves entrepreneurs who are looking for employees, as well as job seekers that would like to join a high tech startup. The website uses StartupStages, a proprietary expert system developed by the company to help startups clearly communicate their unique job opportunities by providing an "insider's view" into the company. Job seekers can use this information to analyze a startup situation in the same way an investor performs the initial steps of due diligence. Job seekers can then select the job opportunities that match their personal career goals. The TRUSTe Trustmarks are awarded to sites that adhere to established privacy principles and agree to comply with ongoing TRUSTe oversight and consumer resolution procedures. TRUSTe has nearly 1,000 licensees to date. SPEECH RECOGNITION Fonix Corporation licenses text-to-speech technology to KunnSoft Fonix Corporation (Salt Lake City, Utah; www.fonix.com) announced the signing of a long-term licensing agreement with KunnSoft Co. Ltd. (Seoul, Korea), a Korean-based company specializing in communication software. Initially, KunnSoft will implement Fonix's AV2001 Text-To-Speech in the Netori Education 2000 program, an interactive software product used to teach native Korean and Japanese speakers basic English and specialized English vocabulary. The Fonix AV2001 Telephony/Multimedia Interface is an intelligent system of speech synthesis. A rules-based expert system analyzes the syntax created by a series of words and determines how each word must be pronounced, in order to bring our the intended meaning of the text being processed. The system replicates how humans convert a line of text into a stream of text-sensitive sound pulsations. Netori Education 2000 will be available in November. KunnSoft will introduce and demonstrate the Netori application at COMDEX Japan, Nov. 9-12, in Tokyo. Lernout & Hauspie expands Pacific Rim presence Lernout & Hauspie (L&H) (Burlington, Mass.; www.lhsl.com) announced the acquisition of Bumil Information & Communications Ltd. (www.bic.co.kr), a Korean developer of interactive voice, call center and other telecommunications market applications. The acquisition will give L&H the resources to expand its telecommunications application development experience and position in the Pacific Rim. Bumil recently used L&H technology to develop telecommunications applications for Korea's largest commercial bank and for the Korean Stock Exchange. The acquisition calls for L&H to purchase Bumil for $25 million in cash, with up to an additional $25 million earn-out to be paid in January 2001, based upon performance. L&H expects the transaction to be slightly dilutive for 1999 and accretive in the year 2000. Bumil has been an L&H business partner and licensee since 1997, and during that time, has deployed L&H's speech technology in several highly visible, strategic telecommunications applications for leading Korean companies. NEURAL NETWORKS MGIC announces lender CRM strategies powered by neural net model Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corporation (MGIC) (Milwaukee, Wis.; www.mgic.com), a private mortgage insurer, unveiled its customer relationship management (CRM) strategies a comprehensive approach to customer retention and relationship building that utilizes e-commerce, predictive models and consumer-direct marketing to help residential mortgage lenders identify new customers and better serve existing ones. MGIC's CRM strategies allow lenders to offer a web site that enables consumers to obtain mortgages totally online. The site, a service of Customers Forever, LLC (Milwaukee, Wis.; www.customersforever.com), issues loan approvals quickly, contingent only upon receipt of a title insurance commitment. MGIC's CRM strategies are designed to help lenders deal with the primary challenge of servicing mortgages mortgage prepayment. MGIC's CRM strategies utilize their Neural-Net Prepayment Model. In 1997, MGIC deployed its own loan-level neural-net prepayment scoring model. The model was developed over two years using neural network modeling technologies and loan-level information from a database of millions of loans starting with payoffs from 1989. Since 1997, the model has been used to score over 15 million loans. The InterCept Group offers Falcon Debit fraud protection to clients The InterCept Group Inc. (Norcross, Ga.; www.intercept.net), a provider of integrated electronic commerce and Internet banking products and services for community financial institutions, announced that it will offer its clients Falcon Debit from HNC Financial Solutions, a division of HNC Software Inc. (San Diego; www.hnc.com). Falcon Debit is a predictive software solution designed to provide neural network-based cardholder profiling and real-time transaction scoring techniques for debit card fraud detection. HNC Financial Solutions is a provider of predictive customer relationship management (CRM) software for the payment card and consumer lending industries. Its suite of decision platforms and predictive business solutions address the mission-critical, customer-lifecycle needs of financial institutions. Brasilian Bank to fight money laundering fraud with PRISM ACI Worldwide (Omaha, Neb.; www.aciworldwide.com), a provider of enterprise electronic payments solutions, announced the licensing of its PRISM fraud management system to Brazillian bank, Banco Itaú S.A. (São Paulo; www.itau.com.br). Banco Itaú will use PRISM to monitor and control fraud involving money laundering. Banco Itaú will use PRISM to meet money-laundering mandates established by the Central Bank of Brazil. PRISM will monitor "universal accounts"accounts that tie together the various bank accounts to which individuals and businesses have accessto detect and alert bank officials to possible money laundering activity. A graphical interface enables officials to review alerts and take appropriate action. PRISM includes patented technology provided by Nestor Inc. (Providence, R.I.; www.nestor.com) and is supported and distributed around the globe by ACI Worldwide. BIOMETRICS Credentia and others selected for Israel border security system Credentia (Minnetonka, Minn.; www.credentia.com), a Datacard Group company, announced that its plastic card printers, ID software and cameras have been chosen as part of a multi-vendor, biometrics-based identification solution for the Israeli Ministry of Defense and Israeli National Police. EDS Israel (www.e-d-s.com), serving as prime contractor for this project, also engaged the services of On Track Innovations, Oberthur Smart Cards USA, Visionic Corporation, Team Computers and Recognition Systems Inc. to satisfy the overall solution requirements. The solution, expected to be deployed within a year, combines biometrics, smart chips and other plastic card-based identification technologies to increase safety and efficiency for more than 50,000 individuals who cross the border to Israel each day for work. Who?Vision and Philips partnership results in thinner, durable solution Who?Vision Systems Inc. (Lake Forest; www.whovision.com) and partner Philips Flat Display Systems (FDS) (San Jose, Calif.; www.flatdisplaysystems.philips.com), a business group of Royal Philips Electronics (Amsterdam, the Netherlands; www.philips.com), have successfully created and tested extremely compact fingerprint biometrics solutions. This new solution places Who?Vision's patented TactileSense technology on a thin glass, or plastic, display engineered by Philips. This means that fingerprint readers can be as small as the size of a postage stamp and as thin as 1/8-inch. In addition, the electronics are isolated from the replaceable polymer sensor making the resulting product exceptionally durable. The size and durability of this solution allows biometrics to be incorporated into the full range of Internet-connected devices from personal digital assistants to cell phones to laptop computers to set-top boxes. SAC Technologies Inc. to change name to IDME Inc. SAC Technologies Inc. (Minneapolis, Minn.; www.sacman.com), a biometric technology development company, announced it intends to change the name of the company to IDME Inc. Pending shareholder approval and the preparation and filing of customary documentation with applicable governing authorities, the corporate name change will become effective Nov. 5, 1999. The company believes the name change to IDME Inc. will create a natural association between the company, its products and market applications. The company has reserved the Internet Domain name "idmeonline.com," filed a Federal Intent-to-Use trademark application for "IDME," reserved the stock ticker symbol "IDME" with NASDAQ-BB OTC and reserved the corporate name "IDME Inc." with the state of Minnesota. KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT Open Text joins forces with SAP Open Text Corporation (Waterloo, Ontario; www.opentext.com), a provider of collaborative knowledge management and corporate portal solutions, announced a technology alliance with SAP AG (Walldorf, Germany; www.sap-ag.de), a developer of inter-enterprise software solutions. The agreement delivers Open Text's Livelink collaborative services to mySAP.com Marketplace. mySAP.com provides an open collaborative business environment of personalized solutions on demand. This relationship between Open Text and SAP will provide enterprise collaboration for communities of interest in mySAP.com Marketplace to share ideas, insights and experience. Open Text will show Livelink's collaborative features including: focused industry discussions, knowledge libraries and news channels for mySAP.com at SAPPHIRE'99 Philadelphia, the SAP Americas Annual Customer Conference. Additional Livelink features, such as Livelink team calendars are scheduled to be added by year's end. Corechange licenses Autonomy technology for corporate portal Corechange Inc. (Boston; www.corechange.com), a supplier of information management software, announced that it is licensing Autonomy's core technology to help companies using its Coreport corporate portal add advanced information categorization and personalization capabilities. DATA MINING SAS Institute and Ernst & Young team on CRM solutions SAS Institute Inc (Cary, N.C.; www.sas.com), a provider of integrated data warehouse, data mining and decision support solutions for customer relationship management (CRM), announced that SAS software will play an integral role in Ernst & Young's (New York; www.eyi.com) CRM technology solution. This solution is based on Ernst & Young's CRM methodology called Value Exchange Optimization, which combines Ernst & Young's proprietary CRM subject-matter expertise with complementary technologies to help organizations optimize customer relationships. Using SAS software as a part of its CRM solution Ernst & Young plans to deliver robust data management and data mining capabilities, in order to realize strategic customer segmentation precision, valuation and other CRM activities. Business Objects and Brio Technology settle patent suits Business Objects (San Jose, Calif.; www.businessobjects.com) and Brio Technology (Palo Alto, Calif.; www.brio.com) announced the settlement of their pending patent litigation involving Business Objects' United States patent number 5,555,403 entitled "Relational Database Access System Using Semantically Dynamic Objects." Under the agreement, the detailed terms of which are confidential, Brio acknowledges the validity of Business Objects' US patent number 5,555,403 and Brio will pay an undisclosed sum of Business Objects for rights to use the patent. In addition, Brio will dismiss its pending lawsuit against Business Objects alleging infringement of Brio's US patent number 5,915,257. Sand Technology Systems International completes transaction Sand Technology Systems International (Westmount, Quebec; www.www.sandtechnology.comsandtechnology.com) completed the transaction announced on July 8, 1999, whereby Sand sold its 40 percent share in Hitachi Data Systems Inc., the Canadian operating arm of Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (Santa Clara, Calif., www.hds.com), to Hitachi Data Systems Corporation. Sand received $7,295,076.00 Canadian. Sand Technology Systems International Inc. is a developer of scalable software solutions for data mining, data marts, data warehouses and online analytical processing (OLAP). Business Objects launches implementation for SAP BW Business Objects (San Jose, Calif.; www.businessobjects.com), a provider of integrated enterprise decision support tools, announced the launch of its implementation program for SAP business information warehouse, SAP BW. The implementation program will include Business Objects employees who have been trained by SAP AG (Walldorf, Germany; www.sap-ag.de) and SAP worldwide country sites, and they will be available for key strategic opportunities that have been qualified by Business Objects and SAP. The certified members of the Business Objects implementation program for SAP BW will include employees working in pre-sales consulting, consulting and technical support. They will receive extensive training from SAP, including: hands-on experience working with the SAP BW tools concerning topics, such as analyzing, data modeling, and extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) of data; an overview of SAP BW data warehousing concepts and architecture; creation of reports with the SAP BW Business Explorer analyzer query builder; organization of the queries in the Info Catalogue using the SAP This announcement continues the strong momentum that Business Objects has been generating with SAP over the past couple years. Business Objects and SAP announced in June 1999 that the two companies were bundling BusinessObjects with SAP BW for a special joint promotion in southwest Europe. VIRTUAL REALITY MathEngine signs middleware agreement with Sony Computer Entertainment MathEngine Inc. (San Francisco; www.mathengine.com), a provider of natural behavior software, which allows complex, physics-based interactive simulation, announced that it has signed a Standard Tool and Middleware Development and License Agreement with Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. (Foster City, Calif.; www.playstation.com) to provide its development tool, MathEngine, to PlayStation2 title developers. In addition, the company is extending its business operations into Japan, opening a Tokyo office and exhibiting its technology at the CESA Developer's Conference. MathEngine's technology enables users to replace scripted, planned or pre-recorded animation sequences with fully interactive, real-time physical simulations and behaviors. iMove ships spherical video system iMove Inc. (Portland, Ore.) has delivered the first production spherical video system, the iMove Spherical Video System (SVS-1000), to the Illinois Institute of Technology Research (IITRI) (Chicago; www.iit.edu). This system, and subsequent systems ordered by IITRI, will be used to produce immersive content for various government agencies. The crux of the SVS-1000 is an all-digital spherical video camera. Two inches square and weighing barely three pounds, the SVS Camera is mounted on a handle that comprises the entire capture unit. Multiple 24-bit color video data streams feed via cable into the portable SVS Camera Processor. This computer features a 13-inch screen and 18GB removable hard drive that can store up to forty-five minutes of compressed video per drive. The SVS Post System is used to seam the video streams, add audio, sound effects and titles. This System consists of a high-speed workstation using Adobe Premiere and iMove's panoramic media production suite for non-linear video editing. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Symmetry and MEDai begin strategic alliance Health care analytic tool developer Symmetry Health Data Systems Inc. (Phoenix, Ariz.; www.symmetry-health.com) announced the signing of a strategic relationship with Medical Artificial Intelligence (MEDai) (Orlando, Fla.; www.Medai.com). Under the new relationship, MEDai will use Symmetry's patented Episode Treatment Group (ETG) software in a number of applications available to its clients. Symmetry's patented ETG is an illness classification and episode building software product that captures clinically relevant services and prescriptions provided during a patient's treatment and organizes the data into episodes of care. ETG software is currently used by more than 250 managed health care plans and their providers across the United States. Web Site © Copyright 1999 by Lionheart Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved. 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