Maporama joins UDDI e-commerce standards

PARIS -- Maporama, a leading provider of online location-centric applications, has joined the Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration project (UDDI). This project is an industry initiative working to enable businesses to quickly, easily and dynamically find and transact with one another using a preferred application.

"The UDDI project is set to change the online business world, cutting distance between businesses worldwide down to a search in an industry standard directory, thus making transactions between companies totally transparent and hassle-free," said Laurent Vermot-Gauchy, Maporama CEO and President. "Maporama is pleased to be at the forefront of the construction of this new corner stone of future online business."

He said he considers the UDDI project to be a sweeping industry initiative. The project creates a platform-independent, open framework for describing services, discovering businesses, and integrating business services using the Internet, as well as an operational registry that is available today.

Vermot-Gauchy said Maporama¹s participation in the UDDI project means the company¹s online location-centric products now become available as one of the first high-value applications via the industry-wide open-initiative for Web services. Companies across the whole world will benefit as a result through instant access to the market¹s most advanced location-centric solutions.

Defining the future

As an active member of the UDDI project, Maporama will participate in the defining of the future UDDI standard allowing any enterprise to describe its business, find other companies that offer desired products or services, and integrate with them.

"We consider Maporama's extension of their online location-based products to be a great example of layering value added services on top of the UDDI Business Registry," said Jenna Miller, Group Product Manager at Microsoft Corporation.

UDDI is generally regarded as the first truly cross-industry effort driven by all major platform and software providers, as well as marketplace operators and e-business leaders. These technology and business pioneers are acting as the initial catalysts to quickly develop UDDI and related technologies.

The UDDI specification takes advantage of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards such as Extensible Markup Language (XML), HTTP, and Domain Name System (DNS) protocols. Additionally, the UDDI specification addresses cross platform programming features by adopting the proposed Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) messaging specifications found at the W3C web site.

Business and technology leaders

The UDDI Community is comprised of 300 business and technology leaders working together to enable companies and applications to quickly, easily, and dynamically find, and use Web services. As a cornerstone of the emerging Web services architecture, UDDI will benefit businesses of all sizes by creating an open platform-independent specification. As a part of the UDDI project, a UDDI Business Registry has been established to allow businesses to publish and discover Web services. 

Maporama is a leading provider of location-centric applications. The company's marketing says that location-centric applications enable organisations to turn their location data into profit, accelerating consumers¹ purchase decision cycle by helping them find specific products at specific stores while sharing store-specific information internally with employees and externally with suppliers.

Maporama's product offer includes advanced mapping and routing turnkey products as well as a powerful and complete API library for developers. In order to guarantee customer flexibility and autonomy, Maporama provides Maporama Partner Solutions, an integrated online administration suite.

Maporama is the only location-centric solutions provider to localise an address of over a billion of consumers around the world offering, in addition to industry standard European and North American coverage, detailed street maps of Eastern Europe, Australia, South America.

Industry innovations

From its inception in 2000, Maporama has had a number of industry innovations. In 2000, Maporama was first to announce pre-packaged solutions per industry sector. In 2001, the company was also first to announce location-based advertising products.

Today, the company is building an approach to enterprise-wide location-centric applications, compliant with any existing communication platform (Web, wireless, PDAs, set-top-boxes) as well as with any existing cellular or landline telephone device through speech technology.

Maporama has 500 customers in 15 countries including Yahoo!, Aventis, Europcar, Dr Martens, Estée Lauder, Thomson Multimedia, UBS Warburg, Diageo. Headquartered in Pari, Maporama markets its products in Europe and in the USA.

The Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) project is a project creating a platform-independent, open framework for describing services, discovering businesses, and integrating business services using the Internet.

All major providers

UDDI is the first truly cross-industry effort driven by all major platform and software providers, as well as marketplace operators and e-business leaders. Cross platform programming features are addressed by adopting early versions of the proposed Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) known as XML Protocol messaging specifications found at the W3C Web site. The UDDI protocol is the building block that will enable businesses to quickly, easily and dynamically find and transact with one another using their preferred applications.

Before the UDDI project, there was no industry-wide, accepted approach for businesses to reach their customers and partners with information about their products and Web services. Nor was there a method of how to integrate into each other's systems and processes. 

Registering with UDDI enables a company to publicly list basic information about their company and offerings. There will also be the option to list a catalog of products, services and guidelines for engagement. Registered companies will then be accessible in searches by potential buyers and marketplaces. As registrants, integration will be significantly easier and more dynamic for companies transacting business with each other.