fourthchannel Announces Partnership with BEA Systems; WebLogic E-Business Platform increases flexibility of ProfitBuilder Commerce Suite

Business Wire, April 10, 2001

Business Editors/Hi-Tech Writers

COLUMBUS, Ohio--(BUSINESS WIRE)

April 10, 2001-fourthchannel, a leading provider of e-business selling solutions, announced today that it will offer its ProfitBuilder Commerce Suite on the WebLogic E-Business Platform from BEA Systems, Inc.

The move allows fourthchannel, which joins the BEA Star Partner Program, to meet increasing demand for ProfitBuilder Commerce Suite as a full-featured hosted or licensed e-business system that can be carefully tailored to customer requirements. fourthchannel selected the WebLogic infrastructure based on its reliability, scalability, performance on multiple platforms, and its support for the open Enterprise Java standard.

"ProfitBuilder Commerce Suite is a comprehensive sell-side solution that is suited for use by a wide range of customer types, from the mid-market to the enterprise," said Mike Brannan, fourthchannel's vice president of development. "BEA's technology provides us with flexible tools to make our suite of applications more scalable, fault tolerant, and redundant, as well as more hardware and operating system independent. This is true whether we deliver to customers via our own hosting service or on the customer's premises."

ProfitBuilder Commerce Suite helps companies expand their direct selling activities, manage their distribution channels, participate fully in e-marketplaces, and develop private exchanges with collaborative capabilities. WebLogic is an open, scalable e-business platform supporting XML, WML and enterprise Java.

About fourthchannel

fourthchannel is a leading provider of e-business solutions that enable manufacturers and distributors to sell complex products via the Internet. fourthchannel's integrated catalog, order management, configuration and transaction capabilities enhance relationships between suppliers, distributors and their customers. With fourthchannel's proven platform, companies can expand and manage their selling channels, participate fully in e-marketplaces, and develop private exchanges with collaborative capabilities. fourthchannel enhances the Web selling process for companies in a wide variety of industries, including automotive, healthcare, energy, entertainment, manufacturing, industrial distribution and government.

fourthchannel is one of Upside magazine's Hot 100 Private Companies with Exceptional Potential and is on Managing Automation magazine's list of 25 New Technology Companies to Watch.

For more information, visit www.fourthchannel.com or call 1.800.827.7252.

BEA and WebLogic are registered trademarks of BEA Systems, Inc. BEA WebLogic E-Business Platform, BEA WebLogic Server, BEA WebLogic Commerce Server, BEA WebLogic Personalization Server, BEA WebLogic Collaborate, and BEA WebLogic Business Process Integrator are trademarks of BEA Systems, Inc. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the company with which they are associated