American Education Services and Jacada Successfully Integrate Student Loan Systems

Business Wire, Dec 3, 2001

Business Editors & High Tech Writers

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 3, 2001

Jacada Ltd. (NASDAQ: JCDA) today announced that the American Education Services (AES), a division of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA), has successfully completed integration of its student loan systems using the Jacada Interface Server.

By consolidating its various loan systems with a common, browser-based Graphical User Interface (GUI), AES offers the students and educational institutions it serves an easy-to-navigate, "point-and-click" environment to access important loan information and records from any location.

OneLINK is used to process school financial aid loan applications that will be guaranteed by the Federal government and COMPASS actually manages the dispersion of funds to the individual schools. Developed in-house by AES's IT staff, OneLINK is written in Fusion on a Unix server, whereas COMPASS, developed using COBOL, resides on an S/390 mainframe. Generating over 850 green-screens between them, the two applications contain mission-critical business logic that automates core operational functionality. AES has implemented the Jacada solution to modernize, integrate, and extend these core legacy applications to an entirely new set of users.

"These applications were originally created to streamline administration," comments Angie Brenza, AES's Vice President of Application Development. "They are exceptionally well suited to address our day-to-day business needs, however, the growth of the Internet as a deployment mechanism, forced us to re-evaluate our computing model. We wanted to provide a seamless experience for our users, and we saw application consolidation at the presentation level as the easiest and most cost-effective way to accomplish the task. Additionally, we are now able to offer our services to a much larger audience via the Internet."

The combined system, now known simply as OneLINK, fully utilizes the unified Jacada Interface Server development and deployment environment to generate both Java and HTML interfaces that are tailored to address the needs of different sets of users. Since university Financial Aid Officers needed rich functionality, AES deploys a Java front-end that offers complete application access for these users. In parallel, students that access the application require limited capabilities, and have more demanding connectivity requirements. Therefore, AES decided that they were better served with HTML.

"We were very happy with the navigational modifications that we made," comments Brenza. "But even more so, we were excited by the fact that our users would now have a seamless experience when using the disparate applications. By employing Jacada to reuse our proven business logic, we can now better care for our existing customers, and we can confidently expand our national customer base as we compete with the established players in our industry."

About AES - American Education Services (AES), is a division of the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency (PHEAA), a multifaceted financial aid services organization that harnesses the power of technology and innovation to better serve students, families, schools and lenders throughout the nation. Over the past 36 years, the agency has grown from a small, Federal student loan guarantor with a guaranty volume of only 4,600 loans to one of the nation's largest, full-service financial aid services providers. Today, AES manages more than $33 billion in total assets and serves nearly four million

students nationally through its guaranty, servicing and financial aid processing systems. The funds generated from its extensive operations are used to improve higher education opportunities and lower the cost of financial assistance for students and families while streamlining the entire process for the financial aid community.

About Jacada Ltd. - Jacada Ltd. is the leading provider of interface and workflow solutions that accelerate the delivery and maintenance of enterprise applications. Jacada products address the need for extending, web-enabling and integrating legacy systems, automating enterprise workflow, and delivering a universal user interface for new and existing applications. Jacada solutions are in use today at major corporations and government organizations such as AIG, Caterpillar, Citibank, Conseco, Delta Air Lines, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, The Federal Reserve Bank, Fireman's Fund, Porsche Cars North America, Prudential Financial, US Department of Interior, and Verizon. Jacada operates globally with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia; Herzliya, Israel; and London, England. Jacada can be reached at www.jacada.com or at 1-800-773-9574.

This news release may contain forward-looking statements that are made pursuant to the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ substantially from these statements. For a more complete disclosure of these risk factors, please refer to the Company's quarterly Form 10-Q and Form 10-K filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.