Bluestone Software Books Deal With Borders Group; Bluestone's Sapphire/Web Application Server Infrastructure to Power Borders' Fast Track E-Commerce Systems

Business Wire, March 15, 2000

Business Editors/Hi-Tech Writers

PHILADELPHIA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 15, 2000

Bluestone(R) Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:BLSW), a leading provider of Enterprise Interaction Management software, today announced that Borders Group, Inc. (NYSE:BGP), a global book, music and video retailer with over 300 superstores on four continents, has selected Bluestone's Sapphire/Web(R) Application Server as the infrastructure to power Borders Group's fast-track e-commerce systems.

Selected from a group of over 25 candidates, Bluestone Sapphire/Web will replace an aging legacy system that currently links Borders' primary e-commerce Website, Borders.com, and the company's in-store "special order" systems -- Borders Express and NetSPO. The Bluestone system will tie together Borders' numerous, different ordering systems around the world, and is designed to provide the company with the expansion headroom needed to meet its future growth targets for Web-based, e-commerce, direct sales to customers, as well as for the company's burgeoning special order business, which is fast becoming an important source of additional revenue.

To implement the Sapphire/Web infrastructure, Bluestone partnered with Decision Consultants, Inc.(DCI), a leading systems integrator headquartered close to Borders Group's Michigan head office.

"Bluestone's experience, technical prowess, and unwavering commitment to demonstrating the extensive capabilities of its software led us to conclude that they offered us the best all-round solution for augmenting the capabilities of our e-commerce systems," stated Mark Winterhalter, vice president Information Technology of Borders Group, Inc. "We feel confident that Bluestone's exceptional product and team-oriented approach will enable Borders Group to continue to aggressively pursue our retail convergence strategy, and to continue to lead the market in terms of customer service and assortment."

Commenting on the agreement signed with Borders Group, John H. Capobianco, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Bluestone Software, said, "As we have demonstrated in this extremely competitive situation, Bluestone offers the most versatile solution for both e-tailers and retailers who, increasingly, need to integrate systems in different geographies, running on different operating systems, into a distributed, scalable, robust, Web-based system that offers extensibility for future expansion needs. We also proved the winning virtues of a partnership approach by aligning our efforts with the experts at Decision Consultants--we intend to continue to leverage the expertise and talent of local systems integrators in future sales situations."

Added Jack Krasula, chairman & CEO of Decision Consultants, Inc., "We are very pleased to be chosen by Borders and Bluestone on this project. Our combination of e-Business expertise, systems integration experience, and the Bluestone Sapphire/Web software enables us to deliver a complete business solution for Borders. We are proud to be associated with industry leaders, like Borders and Bluestone."

Borders Group Commissions An Extensive IT Modernization

Faced with replacing the company's existing "middleware" solution, which links the company's Web servers and in-store terminals with its central database, Borders Group issued a detailed Request for Proposal (RFP) to more than 25 vendors, including Bluestone Software. "Our primary objectives were to improve our systems' capabilities in the critical areas of scalability, failover, fault tolerance and overall infrastructure," observed Don Warren, project manager at Borders Group. "We asked the vendors to demonstrate how their systems would increase the number of concurrent users, improve users' access to ordering information, and address our needs for business-to-business transactions with our distribution and warehousing affiliates."

From among the eleven detailed responses received by Borders, three vendors were selected to present a prototype system to Borders' management. Bluestone was one of these finalists. From a technical perspective, a crucial part of the challenge set for these finalists was to architect a solution that could efficiently and elegantly tie customer-facing Web Application Servers, as well as in-store custom applications in the company's Borders superstores, and Borders and Waldenbooks mall stores, to the company's database servers. The Web Application Server needed to integrate the Visual C -based system, used by Borders' customer service representatives to enter customers' phone-in orders, as well as run on IBM's AIX operating system. A further key feature stipulated by Borders was the ability to closely monitor system performance, along with the time taken to complete various transactions, so that the company would be able to quickly take appropriate action should a sub-system experience extraordinary loads, or a client report increasing system response times.

In Borders' final analysis, Bluestone's prototype system scored extremely well and was selected for the open, robust, 100% Pure Java architecture of Sapphire/Web, as well as its high performance under heavy user and application loads, hot swapping of system components, proven scalability, customer-facing fault tolerance, and track record of stability and dependability with Bluestone's existing customer base. As a Java-based, Web Application Server framework, Sapphire/Web runs on all Java Virtual Machines and natively supports all Border platforms and systems, without the need for porting. Of particular importance to Borders, Sapphire/Application Manager (SAM) offers the company key real-time monitoring, control and deployment options by providing system administrators with notification services for outages, performance bottlenecks and trending.