Alan Burton

E-Business Manager - Alan Burton (BSc, PhD)

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Alan completed a PhD in text and language processing.Since then Alan has specialised in the field of electronic publishing, particularly SGML and XML.Prior to joining Media Technology Alan has worked widely throughout the publishing industry, including Butterworths Australia, and Law Book Company, and Aries in London.

- Alan's team delivers the innovative e-business systems focussed around digital information publishing for our customers.

Our aim is for these transactions to be performed entirely without manual input," explains Alan Burton, E-Business Manager at Media Technology.
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"And so, to obtain the best results possible, we decided to use XML," says Burton.
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"To use this technology efficiently, we needed not only applications based on XML - but also a storage system capable of holding XML documents without having to convert them," explains Burton."And for this we needed an efficient database platform providing top reliability and performance and full scalability of the applications Media Technology develops.We also needed the flexibility to support the entire range of the various data formats, from text and graphics to video and audio."That's why Tamino is now the basis on which the company develops its solutions.

"We scoured the market for the best XML database server, and finally struck gold with Tamino," says Burton.
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There they can check stock levels and the current status of orders, query prices or other product information and place new orders at any time," says Burton on the advantages of XML for Media Technology.

But Burton is thinking even further ahead.He wants to integrate customer and vendor systems to achieve even greater increases in productivity."We want to keep our customers informed while streamlining our order entry and document management processes by integrating the application into the sales process," explains Burton.

Our aim is for these transactions to be performed entirely without manual input," explains Alan Burton, E-Business Manager at Media Technology.This Australian company is among the largest service providers of CD-ROM publishing and sales in the Asia-Pacific region.Acquired in June 2000 by Software Images, a New Zealand provider with a similar offering, Media Technology currently has around 150 employees and produces about 10 million CDs a year.

Media Technology's acquisition by Software Images has opened up a number of new business opportunities.It also enables the company to step up its involvement in CD-ROM publishing and sales on the one hand and electronic information fulfillment (i.e. execution of the entire business process) on the other.

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"And so, to obtain the best results possible, we decided to use XML," says Burton.

Media Technology developed its XML applications in-house.It has experienced XML and SGML programmers and extensive know-how.The company is also skilled in the development of complex business-to-business (B2B) solutions.Their new applications will be used not just internally but also for customers in industry and the public sector.

One of the company's most important XML-based applications is e-fulfillment.
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"To use this technology efficiently, we needed not only applications based on XML - but also a storage system capable of holding XML documents without having to convert them," explains Burton."And for this we needed an efficient database platform providing top reliability and performance and full scalability of the applications Media Technology develops.We also needed the flexibility to support the entire range of the various data formats, from text and graphics to video and audio."That's why Tamino is now the basis on which the company develops its solutions.

"We scoured the market for the best XML database server, and finally struck gold with Tamino," says Burton."We were won over by the robust architecture and user-friendliness of Software AG 's database server."Another fundamental feature for Media Technology is processing speed.
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There they can check stock levels and the current status of orders, query prices or other product information and place new orders at any time," says Burton on the advantages of XML for Media Technology.

But Burton is thinking even further ahead.He wants to integrate customer and vendor systems to achieve even greater increases in productivity."We want to keep our customers informed while streamlining our order entry and document management processes by integrating the application into the sales process," explains Burton.For this reason, Media Technology is making available externally the e-business applications it has mostly used internally up to now.This gives the company's solutions yet another role: "Of course, the aim of all this is not simply to optimize our own processes; we also want to use the system as a sales tool to demonstrate the potential of B2B solutions to our prospective customers."