DALLAS --
April 5, 2006i2 Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: ITWO) today announced the availability of an enhanced version of the i2 Agile Business Process Platform. The platform features supply chain data management, staging and integration, an enhanced studio for an integrated development, testing and deployment environment, and an expanded collection of best practices and supply chain workflows.
As the foundation of i2’s next-generation supply chain management (SCM) solutions, the i2 Agile Business Process Platform is being used by companies worldwide to deploy global visibility, planning, partner collaboration, advanced supply chain execution, and control. Customers have used the platform to extend industry-specific supply chain practices such as distributed inventory management in the automotive industry, buyer visibility hubs in metals companies, advanced assortment and multi-echelon inventory optimization for retailers, or virtual direct sales models among high-tech and consumer goods companies.
“Today, real-time visibility, responsiveness and adaptability are necessities as business process cycle times are shrinking from days to minutes and the scope of supply chain processes has grown from a single operation to encompass the multi-enterprise supply chain,” said i2 Chief Executive Officer Michael McGrath. “In response, we have applied our nearly 20 years of best-of-breed supply chain innovation to the development of the only platform on the market that offers industry workflows designed for excellence in supply chain management.”
A platform designed for adaptable visibility, planning, collaboration and control
Built specifically for supply chain management, the enhanced version of the i2 Agile Business Process Platform, version 3.0, includes the following features:
- SAP adaptors for Materials Management (MM) and Sales and Distribution (SD) modules
- An enhanced i2 Studio including an improved integrated development, testing and deployment environment
- Enhanced data model management and extensibility
- Enhanced customizations of user interfaces, workflows and business logic
- Enhanced data staging and net change capability
- Support for reusable user interface templates
- Specifications for search, audit trail, purge, upload and export, and state modeling
- Support for model validations and re-factoring
“The SAP adaptors that are a part of the i2 Agile Business Process Platform are designed to allow customers to more rapidly realize value from their technology solutions through greater interoperability,” said i2 Senior Vice President John Cummings. “This ease of interoperability and ability to leverage a supply chain specific platform can deliver increased value for SAP customers using i2’s best-of-breed supply chain solutions.”
Challenging traditional business application architectures
Today’s rapidly changing global business landscape requires companies to use flexible and robust information technology that allows monitoring the real world and responding quickly to changing circumstances, both inside and outside of the enterprise. Accurate and relevant information is needed in order to enable predictable, high-quality supply chain operations. These operations can be achieved through speed and reactivity, flexibility, and low-cost production and integration of IT solutions.
While the platform provides a technological foundation for speed, reactivity and flexibility through service-oriented architecture (SOA) principles, the i2 Business Content Library is key to enabling low-cost design and integration.
i2 Business Content Library
The i2 Business Content Library is a logical collection of next-generation workflows and web services, with the built-in capabilities of data staging, validation, and business rules. These workflows are designed to be used as building blocks to compose and orchestrate specific supply chain processes. i2 next-generation solutions, for example i2 Customer Order Fulfillment, i2 Collaborative Supply Execution, i2 Inventory Optimization, i2 Merchandise Financial Planning and i2 Supply Chain Visibility, are also assembled with these building blocks.
The building blocks cover all architectural aspects of a business application including data models and data rules, integration patterns, business workflows and graphical user interfaces. For example, a building block may encapsulate an inventory balancing functionality that is shared across i2 next-generation solutions as an exception resolution mechanism. Overall, the Business Content Library’s workflows offer building blocks to assist with functional areas such as visibility, planning, collaboration, execution and control.
Unlike traditional integrated development environments where several technologically mismatched modules must be used, the i2 platform uses a single light-weight technology base, so it blends easily with a heterogeneous IT environment and existing applications. Because it is designed for the construction and adaptation of SCM business processes, the platform coexists, complements and enhances non-supply chain specific enterprise platforms such as IBM’s Websphere, SAP’s NetWeaver, BEA’s Weblogic, Oracle’s Fusion and Microsoft’s .Net.
Learn more from April 5 web seminar
The enablement of next-generation supply chain management solutions and closed-loop processes through the use of business process platforms will be the subject of a free web seminar offered by i2 today at 11:00 a.m. ET. The seminar, featuring speakers from Gartner, ON Semiconductor and i2, will offer viewers information on how to leverage business process platforms to enable process excellence, increase customer responsiveness, and decrease time to value.
To register, please visit: http://events.reflectsystems.com/clients/i2/20060405.
About i2
i2 helps business leaders make better supply chain decisions. i2's flexible next generation solutions are designed to synchronize demand and supply across ever-changing global business networks. i2's innovative supply chain management tools and services are pervasive in a wide cross-section of industries; 20 of the AMR Research Top 25 Global Supply Chains belong to i2 customers. Learn more at www.i2.com.
i2 Cautionary Language
This press release may contain forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties, including forward-looking statements regarding the customer's ability to implement or integrate i2 solutions successfully and in a timely fashion, receive expected functionality and performance, or achieve benefits attributable to i2 solutions. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ from those projected. For a discussion of factors which could impact i2's financial results and cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements, please refer to i2's recent filings with the SEC, particularly the Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q filed November 8, 2005 and the Annual Report on Form 10-K filed March 15, 2006. i2 assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this news release.
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For further information, please contact:
Beth Elkin
i2 Corporate Communications
469-357-1000
beth_elkin@i2.com
