Merant Launches Merant Collage 3.1 for Web Content Management in Multi-Platform It Environments

Business Wire, Nov 4, 2002

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

HILLSBORO, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 4, 2002

Easy Implementation and Flexible Architecture Allows Organizations to

Immediately Benefit from End-to-End Code and Content Management

Merant(R) (Nasdaq:MRNT)(LSE:MRN), a leading provider of software and services that deliver flexible control of code, content and other business-critical assets, today announced the latest version of its powerful Web content management (WCM) solution, Merant Collage(TM).

Offering support for BEA WebLogic, Oracle 9iAS and Microsoft XP environments as well as significant performance enhancements, Merant Collage 3.1 enables companies to rapidly design, develop, deploy and manage Web site code and content on even the largest enterprise-class projects, while ensuring quality and preserving creative freedom for contributors.

"A hallmark of Merant Collage is its ability to dramatically accelerate customers' 'time to Web,' not only through seamless integration into existing IT infrastructure, but unparalleled ease of use," noted James Rogers, vice president of product marketing at Merant. "With the release of 3.1, we've gone a step further, enabling customers to benefit from improved accountability, collaboration, workflow and security. And since Collage rapidly adapts to heterogeneous environments, customers will immediately experience increased ROI, while still being able to develop and manage content in their own unique way."

An enterprise-scalable WCM solution delivered at an affordable price, Merant Collage manages the entire Web development lifecycle -- from creation all the way to deployment -- on Internet, intranet and extranet initiatives. Moreover, Collage's ability to tightly integrate with software configuration management (SCM) tools, including the Merant PVCS product family, provides a collaborative environment that helps application developers and Web design teams build Web applications and dynamic Web sites in the most productive and quality-oriented manner possible.

The latest version, Merant Collage 3.1, offers support for BEA WebLogic 7.0 and Oracle 9i Application Server, as well as the Microsoft XP operating system, giving it the unprecedented ability to quickly adapt to, and complement, almost any existing infrastructure. In addition, Merant Collage 3.1 delivers a significant boost in performance, making it ideal for large, distributed enterprise deployments. Depending on their environment and usage, some customers may see performance increases of up to 500 percent in areas such as deployment, preview, asset search and navigation.

With its automated workflow control, powerful deployment engine and built-in productivity features, Merant Collage is specifically designed to help organizations get Web infrastructure up and running quickly, while providing a secure, easy-to-use environment for ongoing content contributions. To this end, Merant Collage 3.1 offers expanded deployment control and flexibility, including the ability to deploy assets residing outside of the Collage repository, to associate custom commands with deployment at multiple points of time and to execute custom commands on deployment servers. Merant Collage 3.1 also enables forms building in content contribution editor through support for form control elements including text fields, password fields, radio buttons and check boxes. This allows advanced content contributors to add form interactions to their HTML pages without using a third-party authoring tool.

Pricing and Availability

Merant Collage 3.1 is available now. For more information on pricing and features, please visit http://www.merant.com.

About Merant

Merant's software and services give companies the most flexible control of code, content and workflow, enabling them to better view, track, protect and re-use these business-critical assets. More than 90 of the Fortune 100 companies rely on Merant's cost-effective solutions to automate business processes, significantly boosting productivity, visibility and overall ROI. For more information, please visit www.merant.com.

Merant, Merant Collage and Collage are trademarks of Merant. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.