Ernst & Young Selects Verity for Enterprise Knowledge Management Solution; Verity's IntelliServ to Enhance Ernst & Young's Global Knowledge Web System for U.S. employees; Solution to be unveiled at Internet World on July 24, 1997

Business Wire, July 24, 1997

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 24, 1997--Ernst & Young LLP and Verity, Inc. (NASDAQ:VRTY), a leading provider of search and retrieval applications for the enterprise and the Internet, today announced that Ernst & Young had selected Verity's IntelliServ and related SEARCH'97 products to extend Ernst & Young's global knowledge management architecture.

The integration of Verity's products promotes Ernst & Young's vision of the "connected enterprise" whereby the firm's U.S. employees will be able to do sophisticated knowledge mining -- to locate information stored anywhere in the enterprise, assess its relevance, and share it globally.

Ernst & Young is working closely with Verity to expand the reach of its key internal knowledge bases. These include the firm's core intellectual property: its key business practices, resource guides, articles, publications and document repositories. Verity's solution includes IntelliServ, an integrated information indexing and enterprise knowledge dissemination system and other components of the SEARCH'97 product family, including a new product integrating Lotus Notes with SEARCH'97, Verity's connector for Lotus Notes. This connector is currently undergoing beta testing at Ernst & Young, and is scheduled for commercial availability before year's end.

"For Ernst & Young, Knowledge Management is not just another online application," said John Peetz, Chief Knowledge Officer of Ernst & Young. "Information is our core asset. Sharing and reusing information assets will transform how we manage our customer engagements; that is, how we conduct our fundamental business."

"We have one of the world's most extensive knowledge frameworks already in place, but we need to be able to navigate this resource efficiently in order to find critical information quickly. To do this, we concluded that knowledge management applications must be built around a powerful search and retrieval engine," Peetz said. "In looking for the best partner, it became clear that we share with Verity a common vision to address the needs of knowledge management." Peetz adds, "Before Verity, we had to know where specific information was stored in order to find it. Today, using Verity's IntelliServ, employees anywhere in the world can search many different sources simultaneously. In the process, they may even discover information they didn't even know to ask for. And Verity's technology also helps us reduce information overload by sorting and classifying search results so that we can focus on the most relevant pieces of information."

IntelliServ, which is available now, is a knowledge management application that monitors data in multiple sources and intelligently disseminates it to users and workgroups based on their preferences. IntelliServ tightly integrates with the Verity SEARCH'97 Platform that allows users to catalog, organize and publish information according to specific interest profiles, enabling organizations to construct enterprise knowledge frameworks that can be accessed easily by employees via the enterprise Intranet. Users can quickly index and locate information anywhere, from desktop computers to enterprise networks, as well across the Internet.

"We see this as an alliance of strategic importance for Verity," said Philippe Courtot, chairman and CEO of Verity, Inc. "Ernst & Young's leadership in the application of knowledge management, and our leadership in knowledge management technology will allow us to leverage our combined strengths to advance both the technology and the discipline itself."

Ernst & Young's Knowledge Web -- Rapid Deployment

In June '97, Ernst and Young began deploying the IntelliServ knowledge management component to more than 25,000 users in the U.S.

About Verity's SEARCH'97 Product Suite

The SEARCH'97 product suite is an integrated knowledge management solution for indexing, searching, retrieving, viewing, classifying and disseminating information across the enterprise. Products include the core enterprise information catalog, SEARCH'97 Information Server, and enterprise dissemination tools, IntelliServ for Windows NT (which includes Information Server cataloging functionality) and Agent Server for Unix. Other SEARCH'97 products include SEARCH'97 Personal for Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Explorer, SEARCH'97 CD-Web Publisher, SEARCH'97 Agent Server Toolkit, SEARCH'97 Developer's Kit, SEARCH'97 Personal for Microsoft Exchange and SEARCH'97 Information Server for Microsoft Exchange. Verity is expanding the product line to include intelligent search components designed to enhance query precision, enable the visualization of information and expand information navigation capabilities. Based on recent acquisitions of 64K Inc. and the KeyView product line from FTP Software, Verity is also developing new products designed to enable searching and navigation of large relational databases efficiently from a web browser, as well as extending its product suite to provide enhanced viewing and filtering of documents within SEARCH'97.