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In a move eliciting mixed reactions from IT users, B2B software and services provider Sterling Commerce on Tuesday is expected to launch the first product to result from its $170 million acquisition of retail technology specialist Yantra last December.
Slated for announcement at the Retail Systems Conference and Exhibition in Chicago, Sterlings “retail solution” will bring together Sterlings own B2B platform and tools with Yantras applications for retail, supply chain, warehouse and order management, according to John Steltzer, Sterlings director of industry development.
Sterlings Gentran Integration Suite is already interoperable with Yantras applications, since both companies technologies are based on Web services, Steltzer said, during an interview with CIOInsight.com.
“Theyre both holding hands pleasantly, side by side,” Steltzer told CIOInsight.com. “But we wanted to provide a deeper level of integration, for better collaboration with partners in the supply chain.”
Scheduled for completion by the end of this year, the new “retail solution” will support both hosted applications and applications run behind the customers network firewall, Steltzer said.
The architecture will also allow for a “hybrid model” in which only some functionality—such as data synchronization—is hosted, as well as for customer “evolution” from software hosting to in-house applications management.
Key areas of functional enhancement will include customer order management; enterprise selling; networked warehouse management, for centralized administration of multiple facilities; and supply chain execution, for managing PO (purchase order) lifecycles, supplier performance, and in-transit inventory, for instance.