Johannesburg, 14 May 2002
First 4 Farming, Progress`s business-to-business (B2B) e-trading hub and portal for the farming sector, has gone live on time and within budget, with its success guaranteed by the critical mass achieved through buy-in by leading agricultural suppliers.
First 4 Farming (F4F) is the world`s first electronic trading exchange and portal for the farming industry. It allows the exchange of documents between members, and links back-office applications while ensuring the integrity and security of the whole trading community. Companies that trade in grains will also be linked to the hub.
"The F4F project is a significant triumph for the farming industry, which now leads in terms of collaboration for e-business," says Rick Parry, MD of Progress Software SA. "It also demonstrates the strength of Progress and its partners to deliver large-scale e-business projects quickly and cost-effectively."
According to Gartner, F4F heralds a new B2B era. The industry analyst says F4F differs significantly from early e-marketplaces, many of which failed or had to scale back their plans and operations. The way in which F4F has been funded and developed breaks new ground and points to a new era for B2B e-marketplaces.
Initially the documents exchanged will include orders and order acknowledgements, delivery and weighbridge advices, invoices, credit notes and contracts.
Phase two is an industry portal for farmers which will provide a single source of farming and related information for the rural community and enable farmers to trade with suppliers via a browser or e-mail, to order goods, obtain information or access their individual trading account details. Suppliers will be able to operate their own branded stores within the F4F portal. In addition, the e-hub will also provide rapid, real-time integration between the F4F portal and the partners` back-office systems to establish a flexible end-to-end e-business platform.
Progress outsourced the infrastructure to 7Global for a lean, secure IT model, and led a consortium of Progress partners that beat IBM, IPlanet/CAP Gemini, Sema, SAP/Commerce One to the deal.
In addition, Progress brought together four of its partners:
* CAL for the development of the phase two portal using the Progress OpenEdge e-business platform including WebSpeed and the Progress database;
* SonicMQ messaging middleware and e-business integration expert Adaptris to provide the e-hub and adaptor technology to link the F4F marketplace partner back-end systems;
* Frontend for Web design and content management; and
* 7Global for hosting.
"The use of Progress SonicMQ as the messaging agent for the e-hub guarantees once-only delivery of business documents and is an essential element of the solution," concludes Parry.
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