D&B Israel Business Directory Goes Online With the NetIS™ E-Publishing Platform

C.D.I. Systems & Dun and Bradstreet, Israel's premier provider of business and financial data, announces the launch of an innovative service that will provide D&B's customers with powerful new tools and services over the Internet, making D&B's 100,000-company database more useful, and more profitable, than ever before.

JERUSALEM, Israel - January 20, 2003 - C.D.I. Systems and Dun and Bradstreet, Israel's premier provider of business and financial data, announces today the launch of an innovative service that will provide D&B's customers with powerful new tools and services over the Internet, making D&B's 100,000-company database more useful, and more profitable, than ever before.

The service is made possible thanks to a unique e-publishing platform developed by CDI Systems, a Jerusalem-based software house. The platform, called NetIS™, is the world's first solution that integrates Web Content Management (WCM), Digital Rights Management (DRM), Full Text Retrieval capabilities and into a single, seamless package for the support of premium content sales. With the help of NetIS™, D&B executives are poised to enter into a more complete partnership with their clients, by offering them unprecedented control of their e-content purchases.

Giving D&B Clients What They Want, the Way They Want It

The system's intuitive, browser-based interface encourages D&B's web-based customers to purchase business and financial data. Clients can preview the data, purchase only what they need, manipulate result lists, and choose the format in which they would like to receive delivery. The system's value-added tools for end-users include: multi-level, full-text search; highlighting of the search phrase; one-step data export to popular programs such as MS-Word and Excel; graph-creation tools; and automated mailing lists and mail merge capabilities.

When performing a search under the new system, there is no need to return to a central results page after viewing each retrieved item. Instead, D&B clients receive an "active" results list equipped with manipulation options traditionally reserved for pure Windows applications. For example, by selecting columns, clients can perform primary and secondary sorts of returned results. They can also rearrange columns, choose among various style options for data display.

A New, Flexible Business Model

Before NetIS™ was incorporated into its business model, D&B sold its digital wares at a fixed price, in one format only: a CD-ROM, contained the company's entire Israel database. Thanks to the NetIS™ e-publishing platform, D&B is now able to market a flexible line of digital products, based on small, pre-defined content units. These content units allow the client to purchase exactly what he needs, and no more.

Under the system, Content Managers can set personalized licensing fees according to user, content, utilization and form of delivery. For example, if a user wants to export data to an Excel file, he will be charged more than if the data is simply viewed or printed. To further leverage the value of the data, the Content Manager can pre-determine the number of times the user is allowed to perform a specific function before he is asked to pay again.

Digital Theft: No More Fear

D&B's choice of NetIS™ as the heart of its on-line infrastructure was based on the platform's ability, not only to deliver content, but to prevent digital theft. Based on "lightweight" browser-client components, the platform's protocol for Digital Rights Management (DRM) operates in complete transparency. When an unauthorized user attempts to view, print, or perform any other function, he is blocked, and given the opportunity to pay the appropriate licensing fee. All user requests are checked against the system's business "backbone": a database that stores information about individual clients, including their access rights, account details and online assets.

D&B executives are confident that the adoption of the NetIS™ platform will allow the company to provide superior value to its clients, while increasing revenue.

D&B Israel - Company Profile

D&B Israel is a subsidiary of Dun and Bradstreet International, the world's leading provider of business information. Founded 160 years ago, D&B's information and technology solutions help businesses reduce credit risk, find profitable customers and manage vendors efficiently. Owners of the world's largest company database, containing information on 75 million companies, D&B allows businesses to verify the potential of trading partners and make informed strategic decisions.

C.D.I. Systems - Company Profile

C.D.I. Systems, a privately-owned software house located in Jerusalem, was founded in 1992. The company provides solutions for electronic and web publishing, including technology licensing, consultancy and complete large-scale turnkey projects. Aspects of NetIS™, the company's core technology, have been deployed on several solutions ranging from interactive legal productions on CD-ROM to dynamic professional databases both on-line and on Handheld devices.

Contact

Avital Bandel
Business Development Manager
C.D.I. Systems
5 Kiryat Mada Street
Jerusalem 91450, Israel
Tel: +972 2 5870112
Mobile: +972-53-828336

avital@cdisys.com
http://www.cdisys.com