Actuate Announces Strategic OEM Agreement With SharpOWL; SharpOWL to Embed Information Delivery within Professional Services Automation Application

Business Wire, July 23, 2001

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 23, 2001

Actuate Corporation (Nasdaq:ACTU), the Information Delivery market leader, today announced a strategic OEM agreement with UK-based packaged software application vendor, SharpOWL. The company will integrate Actuate e.Reporting Suite 5 into the SharpOWL professional services automation (PSA) application.

The Actuate Information Delivery solution enables SharpOWL to publish and deliver the information required by professional services organizations (PSOs), such as IT services companies, research agencies, and management consultants. With Actuate, PSOs are able to manage project data to track deliverables, resource utilization and hidden costs. The reports can be accessed as seamlessly integrated components of a SharpOWL user's e.business web site.

"There's a lot of good information in SharpOWL upon which decisions can be based. The key is getting the information out there to decision makers," said Len Palmer, managing director of SharpOWL. "The powerful way Actuate delivers information to senior management and executives was key in our decision to integrate. Actuate's rich functionality at the business logic level is excellent and essential for PSOs' IT needs."

A key Actuate benefit for SharpOWL is the ability to customize reports. SharpOWL users, whether inside or outside the firewall (including clients), have access to whatever pre-determined level of information is appropriate for them in suitable formats. The interactive and actionable Actuate reports can send data via XML into other analytic applications. With Actuate, SharpOWL can create 'digital dashboards' for its customers -- individual desktops for different stakeholders using the solution -- featuring parametric alert and functionality for opportunity management, bid management, historic analysis of the most profitable business processes, time and expense capture and business intelligence. Actuate also enables SharpOWL's e-billing capability, allowing on-line delivery and approval of detailed bills and supplier data, which can then be passed via XML to accounting systems for automatic settlement.

"Actuate 5 is the only fully Web-enabled reporting solution available, and its integration into SharpOWL takes PSOs into the area of true e-Business," said Alan Hamilton, managing director of Actuate UK. "An efficient and flexible Web delivery solution is extended into every part of the enterprise and outside the firewall. It's a solution that sets the standard for automation in this area."

Actuate has over 170 OEM customers whose products range from applications for electronic marketplaces to customer relationship management to professional services automation. These e-Business leaders and packaged software vendors choose Actuate because its software represents the latest in Information Delivery technology and its e.Services group enables easy integration with existing application infrastructure, thus speeding time-to-market for new products. Further, Actuate's commitment to industry standards including Java, LDAP and XML ensures its product will be compatible with today's most prevalent e-Business applications.

About SharpOWL

SharpOWL has established itself as Europe's largest Professional Services Automation (PSA) solution through a commitment to understanding the needs of professional services organizations. SharpOWL is also the only PSA solution to be partnering with Microsoft by adopting the Project family of products as a solution for project and resource management. The final piece of the jigsaw was to bring essential management data together into one simple, central screen. Digital Dashboard helped achieve this goal, and Smart Tags extend the power of the SharpOWL solution into the Office family. This allows delivery of key business information to busy executives in their normal desktop applications. For more information visit the website www.SharpOWL.com

About Actuate

Actuate Corporation is the leading provider of Information Delivery solutions for Global 2000 companies and packaged application software vendors. Actuate builds solutions for customer applications including client reporting, key performance indicators, CRM, e-Procurement and Net marketplaces. Actuate content is printable, accessible via Excel spreadsheets, and able to exchange data with other applications. Actuate's Information Delivery solutions make it easy to extract operational data from disparate systems and publish secure, interactive and perfectly formatted content that is seamlessly integrated with the rest of a company's Web site. By instantly delivering personalized content to 100,000s of end users -- without downloads -- companies using Actuate can increase revenue, reduce costs and improve customer service. Actuate has over 1,300 direct customers and over 170 OEM partners including American Express, AT&T, Bank of America, BMC Software, Chase Manhattan Corporation, Clarify, Lucent Technologies, WorldCom, PeopleSoft and Siebel.