EXTENSIBLE Markup Language's (XML) march to the forefront of IT infrastructures took a big step last week as more than 150 companies, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS), and the United Nations' Center for Trade Facilitation and E-business (UN/CEFACT) kicked off a crusade for a global, cross-industry framework for electronic business.

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At the same time, the number of options for companies looking to get a jump on using XML for business-to-business application integration continued to swell.

The goal of the global XML initiative, said Bob Sutor, a member of the board of directors at OASIS, in Billerica, Mass., is to tap into the vast technical and business experience of individuals from a number of industries and use that expertise to develop a universal framework for XML, to be called ebXML.

"With all the [XML] excitement, people are going off in small pockets to do their own thing," said Sutor, who is also vice chairman of the ebXML project. "Primarily what we're trying to get done is interoperability, trying to build an overall framework that anyone can plug into."

The ebXML group, which met officially for the first time last week, has outlined an aggressive strategy and hopes to have its initial offering within the next six months. That would put the group on target for delivering a final ebXML framework in 15 to 18 months.

The goal of the project is to develop a cross-industry XML standard for e-business and encourage the continued development of vertical XML standards, not to pre-empt industry-specific XML standards, according to Sutor.

UN/CEFACT has, however, requested a moratorium on XML development among its member groups to allow the ebXML initiative to take lead as the lone standard for cross-industry XML, according to Klaus-Dieter Naujok, chairman of ebXML and a representative of UN/CEFACT.

UN/CEFACT favors such a global framework, Naujok said, because it will level the playing field in the booming world-trade market, giving midsize companies and developing countries the same opportunities to leverage XML as larger companies and developed nations.

"It makes absolute sense because vendors in the past have done the de facto thing, which has left customers trying to figure out what to support," said Dave Power, vice president of marketing at TSI Software, in Wilton, Conn.

"What it is trying to do is identify among the plethora of XML standards which make the most sense to recommend for business-to-business e-commerce," Power said.

TSI this week will announce that it is combining its Mercator integration broker software and Web application integration software to create an XML-based business-to-business integration broker. TSI officials say the product, due next quarter, will enable the integration of XML into legacy applications.

Scriptics this week will ship the full production version of Scriptics Connect 1.0, an XML-based business-to-business application development framework.

The company also announced the availability of a beta version of Scriptics Connect 1.1, which will support Linux and Netscape's Enterprise Web server.

Industry consortium RosettaNet is also making XML noise, with its first 10 XML Partner Interface Processes, which are designed to align the e-business processes of trading partners using XML.