RosettaNet Press Release
Leaders In The IT & EC Industries Announce RosettaNet Standards Implementation Success

Supply Chain Partners Implement Business-to-Business Process Standards in Production Environment

For Release October 10, 2000

SAN FRANCISCO --

More than 60 companies headquartered in Asia, Europe and the Americas are gathering today to announce success in implementing global e-business process standards within the information technology (IT) and electronic components (EC) industries.

Organized around "10.10.2000," a milestone marking production-system implementation of RosettaNet standards, this gathering of supply chain partners and solution partners represents substantial industry-wide participation and velocity.

Progress made by the RosettaNet consortium members signifies a new era of supply chain collaboration, according to RosettaNet CEO Jennifer Hamilton. "RosettaNet partners, many of which compete in the marketplace, are working together to develop open standards that leverage the Internet to revolutionize business processes," said Hamilton. "We are now celebrating strong momentum in the production implementation of these standards."

The theme of 10.10.2000 is the "transition from commitment to implementation," according to Hamilton, who will report that approximately 80 percent of IT and EC Board Member companies have connected with trading partners to implement RosettaNet Partner Interface Processes® (PIPs®). RosettaNet PIPs are system-to-system XML-based dialogs critical to aligning business processes in the supply chain. Working in concert with trading partners are solution providers who deliver system integration, software development and consulting services; RosettaNet membership contains nearly 150 Solution Partner companies that are committed to speeding adoption of RosettaNet standards.

Several thousand people at partner companies are working full- or part-time on RosettaNet implementations, Hamilton noted.

"The current implementations are heavily focused on two PIP® clusters catalog publishing and purchase order processes," said Colin Evans, director of e-business strategy at Intel Corporation and RosettaNet chairman. "PIPs for these clusters have been approved, and most trading partners are actively aligning their businesses to them. Intel is currently exchanging order management PIPs in production with five customers and two suppliers in the US and Japan."

"RosettaNet is rapidly becoming a global standard for high tech B2B," Evans noted. "By the end of the year Intel will be connected to over 20 companies, both customers and suppliers, in the US, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and Europe using RosettaNet standards."

Philips Semiconductors, a member of the RosettaNet EC Board, believes that RosettaNet's operational process enhancements will "easily save the company millions of dollars," according to Mike Hamper, senior vice president of global sales operations at Philips. As one more specific example, he estimates that allowing customers to view order status and obtain cursory price and delivery information in a standardized way will reduce the amount of customer service-related calls by 75 percent.

Trading partner relationships are also strengthened between companies whose business strategies focus on the implementation of RosettaNet standards. "Business-to-business integration is imperative to IBM, and with our successful first production implementation of RosettaNet standards, we have achieved an important milestone," said Philip S. Thompson, vice president, business transformation and chief information officer of IBM. "The RosettaNet open standards are a superb example of companies pulling together to improve the overall efficiency of our industry, and we are beginning to realize these benefits with our sell-side and buy-side partners."

Another EC Board member, Motorola, sees RosettaNet as a cost-saving alternative for an industry that otherwise would have to absorb major costs to develop and implement multiple proprietary e-commerce solutions and third-party interchanges for key business processes between trading partners. In terms of overall benefits, Motorola's Wayne Nesbit, vice president and director of worldwide external technology, said that while it's too early for specific examples, "operational efficiencies from improved cycle times, better customer service, inventory reductions and many other benefits will come to fruition through adoption of RosettaNet B2B process standards throughout the supply chain."

Lucent Technologies, a member of both the EC and IT supply chain boards, views its participation in RosettaNet as another example of how similar companies in the industry can leverage e-commerce technology across many parts of their businesses. According to David Lando, supply network solutions vice president, Lucent Technologies, "Our use of RosettaNet's PIPs will be key starting with product development through the moment we deliver finished products to our customers."

A public event today will showcase partner successes, with selected companies reporting live implementation of PIPs in production-system interfaces between trading partners. Scheduled speakers represent Arrow Electronics, Cisco Systems, Compaq Computer, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, Lucent, Motorola, NEC, and Philips Semiconductors. Other participants sharing achievements include Agilent, AMD, Avnet, Bourns, Dell, FCI, Future Electronics, Hitachi, IBM, MEMEC, Micron, Molex, National Semiconductor, ON Semiconductor, pcOrder, Pioneer, Samsung, STMicroelectronics, Tech Data, Texas Instruments, Toshiba, Tyco Electronics and Xilinx.

In addition to increasing momentum of production PIP implementation in the IT and EC industries, RosettaNet is celebrating rapid growth into new supply chains and recent global expansion. The creation this month of a Semiconductor Manufacturing (SM) Board extends the reach of RosettaNet through the design and manufacture of semiconductors used in a wide range of computer and electronic systems. Regional RosettaNet organizations in North America, Europe, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan are also providing a voice to various business economies seeking to adopt and influence RosettaNet global standards in their respective regions.

RosettaNet will also roll out a new PIP assembly line methodology designed to accelerate development and input processes. "Our methodology has evolved to accommodate multiple supply chains and a vastly expanded number of global participants," Hamilton said.

"Each day RosettaNet gets further distanced from a typical technical standards organization," said Hamilton. "We are deeply involved in supporting e-business process implementation at the same time as evangelizing this methodology to new supply chains. RosettaNet involves more 100 touch points on enterprise business processes, and nothing of this magnitude has ever been attempted before."

According to Karen Peterson, research director at leading industry analyst firm Gartner Group, "This type of standards organization focused around core business processes will be more successful than those which are technical in nature."

About RosettaNet
RosettaNet is an independent, self-funded, non-profit consortium dedicated to the development and deployment of standard electronic business interfaces to align the processes between supply chain partners on a global basis.

More than 300 companies representing over $1 trillion in annual information technology, electronic components and semiconductor manufacturing revenues currently participate in RosettaNet's standards development, strategy and implementation activities. A complete list of member companies and more information on RosettaNet can be found at www.rosettanet.org.