KANA's Web-Based eCRM Solution Sets Industry Benchmark for Scalability on IBM Servers; KANA Contact Center Demonstrates Highest Level of Vertical and Horizontal Scalability

Business Wire, Jan 7, 2002

Business/Technology Editors

MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 7, 2002

KANA(R) (NASDAQ:KANA and KANAD), the leading provider of external-facing eCRM solutions, today announced that its market-leading KANA Contact Center(TM) software can scale to the industry's highest level of concurrent agents. In benchmark testing on IBM WebSphere Application Server, DB2 UDB Database, and IBM pSeries(TM) servers designed to simulate real-world loads, the company demonstrated that KANA Contact Center easily handles 12,000 agents performing 150,000 transactions per hour with excellent response times under two seconds. Leveraging KANA Contact Center's horizontal and vertical scalability, enterprises can reliably scale their operations to manage thousands of simultaneous users and millions of complex interactions.

KANA's external-facing eCRM solutions, the KANA iCARE suite of products, enable enterprises to build contact centers that can scale to support growing numbers of agents, users and partners and increased interaction without affecting response time. KANA Contact Center running on IBM DB2 UDB and AIX on pSeries servers provides a highly scalable, manageable and available environment on which to deploy and grow large-scale CRM applications. The results of the benchmark testing further validate KANA Contact Center's ability to conduct large-scale, high-volume Web-based interactions resulting in improved relationships with customers and partners while reducing costs.

"The results point to KANA Contact Center's ability to handle hundreds of thousands of Web-based customer interactions per hour, making it the most scalable solution of its kind on the market," said Bud Michael, executive vice president of products and marketing at KANA. "This benchmark underscores the value that we deliver to our customers by combining IBM's world-class e-business infrastructure with KANA's best-in-class, external-facing eCRM solutions."

In the benchmark testing, KANA Contact Center validated the company's scalability claims:

- Vertical scalability - With IBM WebSphere's cloning facilities, KANA Contact
Center demonstrated effective resource utilization on IBM's enterprise level
pSeries Servers with no response time degradation.

- Horizontal scalability - KANA Contact Center demonstrated linear transaction
throughput while maintaining response times when adding additional IBM
pSeries(TM) Servers in a clustered, load-balanced configuration.

In addition, KANA's data access layer, KANA Data Objects (KDO), was used to populate customer data at a rate exceeding 3.3 million objects per hour. Given the light system activity during data population, much higher throughput could have been achieved.

"IBM's clients demand ultra-scalable applications such as KANA Contact Center that can meet the requirements of today's large and small organizations alike," said Patrice Mitchell, vice president, IBM eServer solutions marketing, Server Group. "This benchmark demonstrates KANA's ability to deliver highly scalable, customer service applications on IBM's e-business platform. IBM WebSphere Application Server and DB2 UDB running on the IBM eServer pSeries provide one of the highest performing and most cost effective foundations for KANA eCRM solutions."

KANA Contact Center is a highly scalable, geographically distributed system that enables companies to provide outstanding service across multiple communication channels, connecting customers, agents, large databases and legacy systems. Additionally, KANA solutions provide companies with cost savings in the contact center and the ability to accumulate invaluable and unique CRM information.

Nearly 1,200 companies worldwide are using KANA next generation eCRM solutions to drive better relationships through effective, efficient interactions with customers at all points of contact (Web collaboration, phone, e-mail, live chat) and throughout the enterprise. The KANA approach to customer relationship management technology solutions combines sophisticated analytics with thin-client Web architecture to deliver extraordinary customer interactions that decrease costs and drive revenue.

About IBM

IBM is the world's largest information technology company, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. For more information about IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com

About KANA

KANA (NASDAQ:KANA) provides the industry's leading external-facing eCRM solutions to the largest businesses in the world, helping them to better service, market to, and understand their customers and partners, while improving results and decreasing costs in contact centers and marketing departments. Through comprehensive multi-channel customer relationship management that combines the best-in-class KANA iCARE Architecture with enterprise applications, KANA has become one of the fastest-growing providers of next generation eCRM technology. The company's customer-focused service, marketing and commerce software applications enable organizations to improve customer and partner relationships by enabling them to productively interact when, where and how they want - across all touch points, including web contact, web collaboration, e-mail, and telephone. KANA's global customer base includes Global 2000 organizations in the financial services, manufacturing, high technology, communications, retail and services markets. ADP, Chase, E*Trade, GAP, GM, Hewlett-Packard, Kodak, Sony, United Airlines, Verizon, and Williams Sonoma are among the industry leaders that have implemented KANA's eCRM solutions. KANA has locations in 22 countries worldwide, in addition to an extensive global network of channel partners. For more information, please visit www.kana.com.