Actuate Announces New Information Delivery Solution for e-Business Platforms

Business Wire, Oct 16, 2000

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

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SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 16, 2000

Actuate e.Reporting Suite 5 Supports Java and LDAP, Adds Analysis

Capabilities and Delivers Interactive and Actionable Content to

100,000s of Users

Actuate(R) Corporation (Nasdaq:ACTU), the Information Delivery market leader, today unveiled the newest version of its flagship product, Actuate e.Reporting Suite 5. The most powerful and functional Information Delivery solution ever, Actuate 5 is for every company implementing an e-Business strategy to streamline business processes and build stronger relationships with customers, partners and employees. Actuate 5 customers and partners will benefit from new and enhanced features including support for Java and LDAP, additional scalability, and advanced tools for making content more interactive and actionable.

"Information Delivery has emerged as an extremely prominent component of both B2B and B2E applications," said Dave Folger, senior director of Web strategies at META Group. "Going forward, growing user populations within these applications will increase the need for transparent and intuitive user interfaces. Also there will be an increased need for personalized and customized information delivery. And a growing emphasis on knowledge-based activities will spur greater demand for information. Actuate strategy is well positioned to take advantage of these trends driving the emerging Information Delivery market."

Actuate e.Reporting Suite 5

"Actuate 5 is the most significant product in this company's history," said Nico Nierenberg, chairman and chief architect at Actuate. "Built on the tremendous success of our existing product, Actuate 5 extends our leadership position in the emerging and critical Information Delivery market by supporting Internet standards such as Java, XML and LDAP, providing intuitive interfaces that are interactive and actionable while scaling to meet the needs of companies conducting more and more business over the Web. In particular, our extensive support for Java in Actuate 5 allows us to tackle the emerging Java market and more seamlessly integrate with other key components of the e-Business platform."

Actuate 5 is the key Information Delivery component of a company's e-Business platform along with Content Management systems (for publishing documents and images such as online brochures and one-to-one marketing) and Application Servers (for processing transactions). Actuate 5 allows you to create, manage and deliver secure, perfectly formatted content that is seamlessly integrated with the rest of a company's Web site using operational data from multiple sources (e.g. RDBMS, data warehouse, application objects, legacy systems, EAI, etc.). Actuate is used to deliver content such as service level information, transaction histories, performance summaries, manufacturing and distribution status, and customer account information.

Actuate 5 offers a combination of new features that differentiate it from other products on the market:

-- Actuate 5 includes 100% Pure Java content creation and management
facilities;

-- Actuate 5 can call Java Objects directly;

-- Actuate 5 supports hundreds of thousands (100,000s) of end users;

-- Actuate 5 enables tighter integration with existing LDAP and other
centralized directories to minimize administration expenses even as the
population of users grows rapidly;

-- Actuate e.Analysis option, available with Actuate 5, increases the end
user's ability to manipulate and analyze information without the complexity
usually associated with analysis tools;

-- Actuate 5 makes content more interactive and actionable, allowing users to
initiate transactions directly from e.Reports;

-- Actuate 5 delivers information to people via browser without a download (via
DHTML), to a printer (via PDF), or to another application (via XML) -- all from
a single content specification.

Pricing and Availability

Pricing for Actuate 5 ranges from $5,000 to $50,000 per CPU depending on the functionality. The new Information Delivery solution will be available before the end of 2000.

Information Delivery for e-Business Platforms

Organizations today are shifting an increasing number of their business processes to the Web. In order to build e-Business applications that meet the needs of their employees, customers and partners, they are relying on an emerging set of interconnected components and services that constitute the e-Business platform. Actuate 5 is the Information Delivery solution of choice for this e-Business platform.

"Information Delivery is a critical part of a company's e-Business platform, and a valuable means for enhancing relationships with customers, partners and employees," said Mary Lynne Perushek, CIO at Young America, an Actuate customer. "For Young America there is a tremendous amount of information captured by enterprise applications and a related need to deliver this data via the Internet. A key part of our Internet infrastructure, Actuate helps Young America capitalize on this trend so we can continue to provide good service and drive customer loyalty. We will continue to leverage the Actuate Information Delivery solution to extend the value of our e-Business Web site."