BPB Gypsum Selects Open Text's Livelink to Centralize Its Globally Distributed Knowledge Base and Dramatically Improve Project Timelines

Business Wire, Oct 27, 1998

CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 27, 1998--Open Text Corporation (NASDAQ:OTEXF)(TSE:OTC) today announced that BPB Gypsum, one of the world's largest gypsum(1) building material groups, has chosen Livelink to provide a cost-effective way to disseminate information and share knowledge amongst its engineering and R&D departments. Livelink, the market-leading collaborative knowledge management solution from Open Text, is being used to help BPB Gypsum design and build plaster board factories around the world. BPB Gypsum expects that Livelink will reduce time to market by 25 per cent.

"Livelink allows us to have a continuously up-to-date reservoir of knowledge, which is easily accessible from all our sites around the globe. It enables us to improve the quality of the information we gather, which is crucial to implementing our best practices program. The discussion groups we have created on Livelink are generating a better response to the technical queries we have," said Dave Banton, Senior Mechanical Engineer at BPB Gypsum. "We were initially looking for a more traditional engineering document management solution, but when we realized the breadth of applications offered by Livelink, particularly collaborative knowledge management, there was no contest."

Livelink enables project teams within BPB Gypsum to work more effectively, especially when a newcomer joins. The information about each project is centrally stored in Livelink, which means each new member can quickly and easily get up to speed on the history as well as the latest developments and become considerably more effective from the outset.

By transferring historic information into Livelink, the Engineering and R&D departments have been able to reduce the number of paper-based archives. They have also been able to cut down the amount of paper flowing around the office in day-to-day employee communications. Employees no longer need to photocopy documents or disseminate them to team members -- they simply send an e-mail containing the location of the document within Livelink, for colleagues to access it.

Derek Buchanan, UK Country Manager, Open Text, said, "BPB Gypsum was looking for a high performance, multi-platform solution which would be easy to implement and use. Because it is web-based, therefore very easy to deploy, Livelink was up and running two weeks after the order was placed."

About BPB Gypsum

BPB is one of the world's largest gypsum groups, operating more than 90 manufacturing plants and serving markets in over 45 countries. BPB is the leading producer of plasterboard in Europe, Canada and South Africa and has substantial European investments in the manufacture of complementary building materials and paperboard products.

About Livelink

Livelink is a highly scalable, collaborative knowledge management application for intranets. Livelink's richly-featured enterprise document management, virtual team collaboration, business process automation, enterprise group scheduling and information retrieval services are tightly integrated into an off-the-shelf application that is easily customized and extended to fill a broad range of information and knowledge management needs. Livelink servers are fully Web-based and open-architected to ensure very rapid deployment, requiring just a standard Web browser on users' desktops to access its full functionality. Livelink runs on Microsoft Windows NT(R) and the leading UNIX platforms and supports most popular relational database management systems.

About Open Text Corporation

Open Text Corporation's software and services enable the world's largest companies to leverage the global reach and openness of intranets, truly "Putting the Web to Work"(TM) . Open Text has a world-wide installed base of 2.5 million users in 3,400 corporations. Open Text's dramatic growth has been fuelled by the rapid market acceptance of its innovative collaborative knowledge management system, Livelink. The company has been named the growth leader by the Delphi Group and the market share leader by International Data Corporation. Further information about the company, its products and services, and its partners and customers can be found at http://www.opentext.com.

Note to Editors: Livelink is a registered trademark of Open Text Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies.

This news release may contain forward-looking statements relating to the future performance of Open Text Corporation. Forward-looking statements, specifically those concerning future performance, are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. These risks and uncertainties are detailed from time to time in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including the final prospectus for the company's initial public offering of common stock in January 1996, Form 10-K for the years ended June 30, 1997 and June 30, 1998, and Form 10-Q for the quarters ended September 30, 1997, December 31, 1997, and March 31, 1998.