Supply Chain Management.

• Position: Technology Tools - C-Bridge merges with eXcelon Corp. - Brief Article

C-Bridge, an E-enterprise consulting and services provider, has merged with eXcelon Corp., an eXtensible markup language (XML) provider, to create what the companies say will be a "holistic" approach to collaborative data and supply chain management. The combined company, known as eXcelon, is headquartered in Burlington, Mass., and has more then 3,000 customers around the world.

EXcelon doesn't try to compete with Oracle, Commerce One, Ariba and other major software providers for e-commerce systems. "Those systems are in place -- Oracle, Ariba, SAP," says Richard Putz, eXcelon's chief marketing and strategy officer. "What we do -- and SAP is working closely with us -- is try to help this customer with Oracle manage the collaboration process. How do I take the data without having to rewrite that data? What we're doing is enabling existing ERP systems.

"Often, you have an environment with multiple systems, and some are home-brewed, and they're disparate, across the supply chain. We found that customers wanted to move closer to [real time] without disrupting those systems, and we saw that you could lay systems over the environment to help make that happen." Among its products are Stylus...