COMMERCIAL NEWS

Gaithersburg, MD — A new generation of technology that will eliminate the limitations of electronic-marketplace trading was announced today by AdaptiveTrade, Inc. (AT). Six years in development, the company’s new software product, the AdaptiveTrade Engine, is the first major achievement in business-to-business transactions.

The new technology allows businesses to stipulate a near-infinite number of specifications for an electronic-trade (e.g., color, quantity, weight, price). AT’s core technology then seeks, sorts and analyzes trillions of possibilities that meet these criteria and provides the user with the “optimal” trade recommendation, based on the user’s objectives (e.g., lowest price, fastest delivery time or no-tariff purchasing). Any business licensing AT’s optimization engine will see that the time required for information gathering and decision making will be cut from days to hours and sometimes minutes; these dramatic efficiencies will drive down costs and optimize market timing.

Because such intellectual computing power was once believed impossible to achieve, it has been dubbed the “software with a brain.” It is comprehensive enough to fit the needs of any industry – be it mortgage banking, textiles or health care or freight haulers, fabric purchasers and even travelers. the product is easily customized to meet the highly specialized individual specifications that makes every business enterprise unique.

It is little wonder that e-commerce has been a large disappointment in the marketplace. The problem with the system stems from the fact that the Internet exchanges are merely electronic versions of a 300-year old trading tradition, started in Holland, that matches a buyer with a seller via a “bid-and-ask” format.

What distinguishes AT is its ability to push beyond the boundaries of a one-dimensional trading framework. The AdaptiveTrade Engine allows the buyer to declare at the outset a near-infinite list of requirements for a purchase – such as quantity, color – and the business objective to be optimized (such as lowest price). The system searches and identifies sellers in auction exchanges, catalogue exchanges and RFQ exchanges that meet the buyers’ specifications. The system’s sophisticated processes sort these data and recommend to the buyer the optimized buying plan based on the business objective (in this case the lowest price) of the trade.

The intelligence of the system allows the search, sort and recommend process to analyze trillions of possibilities existing in the e-market at that moment in time. This process takes place in minutes and sometimes just seconds, rather than days using today’s generation of technology.

These capabilities are the result of sophisticated levels of mathematical processes and algorithms built directly into the core technology. The developers utilized the know-how of six years of previous research and development conducted for the National Science Foundation (NSF), Office of Naval Research and the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) on which to build the program.

GoLogistics.com fills a market void by matching shippers and carriers on an as-needed basis using the AdaptiveTrade Optimization Engine. The Remington, IN company is the first Internet exchange within the transportation industry to match the empty space of LTL (less-than-load) carriers with shippers. AT’s engine has saved up to 20 percent on transportation costs brought greater efficiencies to this marketplace because the process – which takes just minutes – matches the needs of carriers and shippers; haulers that might have otherwise left empty may now leave full; shippers that may have had to pay extra for a rush charge might now pay a lower, spot-rate market amount.

Baltimore-based Lion Brothers is the world’s largest manufacturer of embroidered emblems. The company procures raw material components such as threads and fabrics from North America and Asia and coordinates fabrication with manufacturers around the world. The highly fragmented nature of the apparel industry makes the supply chain a complex and time consuming process. The company has begun implementing the AdaptiveTrade Engine to identify availability of the raw materials, manufacturer capacities, as well as tariff and import-export logistics.

Anyone who has logged on to one of the popular travel exchanges knows that it can be frustrating trying to book a flight, hotel room and rental car. First, the best choice in each of the three categories must be arrived at separately by the user, using questions that elicit very limited information. But for those sites equipped with AdaptiveTrade’s technology, travelers will be able to state all their requirements at once, rather than searching and obtaining the best choice for their flight, car and hotel reservations individually.

Consider a traveler who wants to spend no more than $l500 to travel to the Caribbean in late December, flying from any airport in the Washington, DC area. This traveler also wants to rent a compact car at the airport which will be equipped with child safety seats and a mobile phone. This traveler has also requested a hotel with a balcony and ocean view.

With the existing technology, this traveler must obtain information that satisfies these requirements by searching each category individually; i.e., flights car rental, lodging. At AT-powered sites, however, the system will recognize the requirements as a bundle. The software “unbundles” the requirements on the Internet in order to seek matches. Thereafter the system rebundles the requirements and provides the optimum recommendation for the traveler based on their objective: i.e. a maximum price of $l500.

The travel exchange site would thus recommend to the voyager to: “Fly Sunny Airlines from Baltimore, MD to San Juan, PR on December 23 and return January ll. Pick up non-smoking compact car equipped with child safety seats and mobile phone at the Friendly Car Company. Register at the Swanky Pines Hotel in downtown San Juan for room with balcony and ocean view. Because your flight arrives after 6:00 PM your hotel is guaranteed by credit card for late arrival. The total cost of this entire transaction is $l,499.00. Your confirmation number for this transaction is ABC123.”

Internet technology has unleashed huge amounts of information about trading opportunities for businesses and consumers. However, this information needed to make sense and, in turn, be formatted as decision making data (what to buy, what to sell, in what quantity, at what price, etc.), and identify the optimal recommendation. The product developers dedicated six years to develop it, building on the know-how of research and development previously established by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Office of Naval Research and the National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA).

The privately held company, headquartered in Gaithersburg, MD, was established by three cofounders in l998. Alex Brodsky, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of the company, is the developer of the core technology. For more than l5 years he has managed R&D projects in private industry, defense and academia, including a position at IBM’s T.J. Watson Center for Research.

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