VIT Application Enables Web-Based Public Access to Income Security Information From Human Resources Development Canada, HRDC

Business Wire, Oct 26, 1998

OTTAWA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 26, 1998--

VIT Customer HRDC Highlighted at GTEC

Conference in Ottawa This Week

VIT today announced that Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) is currently undertaking a massive data warehouse deployment with VIT enterprise applications to deliver employment information to HRDC's 2,300 offices, and ultimately to the entire Canadian public.

Under mandate by the Canadian legislature, HRDC is making information on Income Security entitlements available to all Canadian citizens. Expected to be fully rolled out in the year 2000 via HRDC's existing kiosk network at local HRDC offices, the information will become available early in 1999 to HRDC's 23,000 employees via the department's Intranet using VIT's deliveryMANAGER(tm) application. HRDC's use of the application is especially complex in scope, requiring information in HRDC's enormous data warehouses to be easily accessible by an end-user population exceeding 25 million, in both French and English. HRDC has selected VIT's deliveryMANAGER(tm) for making the complex information in the data warehouse easily accessible via a browser interface to end-users, thereby enabling HRDC's public information mandate. VIT's products also comply with the Canadian government's requirements that all systems going into the year 2000 be Y2K-compliant.

"VIT provides a 'managed warehouse' environment. VIT's deliveryMANAGER acts as a catalogue and 'broker' between the desktop and the warehouse backend - a 'pass through' function, if you will. VIT's 'open database connection' is far superior to other solutions, and so is its Web-based approach -- warehousing and the Internet are made for each other and VIT's competitors are largely locked into 'client server' concepts," said Wayne Terry, Manager, Corporate Decision Support Systems, HRDC.

As the route by which information is made available to HRDC employees and the public, VIT's deliveryMANAGER(tm) is a critical component in HRDC's master plan for its data warehouse strategy. VIT's deliveryMANAGER(tm) accesses HRDC's current transactional data stores, currently from two out of three Oracle data warehouses residing on a Digital Alpha system. VIT was selected following a thorough review of possible vendors of solutions, based on its extensive coverage of the requirements established by HRDC for the application, which defined a web-based information delivery system that supported catalogs and subscriptions, and included support for management reporting and analysis. "We looked at a lot of warehouse applications which were limited to publish and subscribe functions. We need those capabilities, but also much more, including the ability to search, extract, catalog, and present information from multiple data sources, all of which VIT's application does," said Terry. VIT's product will eventually be the single visible vehicle for all Internet-based services delivered by HRDC.

The two warehouses currently in production are the corporate client repository where VIT's deliveryMANAGER(tm) is used to access tables; and the corporate administrative repository using the same VIT product to access Cognos PowerPlay cubes. Eventually, VIT's deliveryMANAGER(tm) will serve as a catalog interface to all of HRDC's data repositories, including the three data warehouses, additional graphics and document management repositories, and all of HRDC's 755 web sites. HRDC also uses VIT's designMANAGER(tm) - an advanced application used to create essential business and technical metadata for conversions - to manage the reams of data in its vast Oracle repositories.

About HRDC

Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) is a Canadian federal ministry created in 1993 with a mission to enable Canadians to participate fully in the workplace and community. The department administers employment insurance and income security programs, as well as human resources programs linked to the requirements of the national economy and labor market.

About VIT

VIT develops and markets enterprise software applications that enable companies to deploy data warehousing, knowledge management and information delivery solutions via the Web. Based in Cupertino, California, VIT is a private company backed by Sierra Ventures. VIT distributes its products through a network of direct and indirect sales channels in America and Europe. For more information, call 800-255-9520, or visit VIT's corporate Web site at http://www.vit.com. VIT is located at 20045 Stevens Creek Blvd., Suite 2F, Cupertino, Calif., 95014; phone 408-255-9512; fax 408-255-2283.

Note to Editors: deliveryMANAGER(tm), designMANAGER(tm) are trademarks of VIT. All other trade names are trademarks of their respective owners.