South Africa's Leading Electric Utility Chooses Convera

Business Wire, Sept 16, 2002

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NOTE TO MEDIA: Multimedia assets available

VIENNA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 16, 2002

Eskom Generation Group's Technicians Maintain Power Stations

Using Convera's RetrievalWare(R) to Manage Millions of

Classified Technical Drawings and Work Procedures

Convera (Nasdaq:CNVR) today announced that Eskom, South Africa's leading energy provider, has installed Convera's RetrievalWare(R) search technology on its corporate portal to assist in more effectively servicing and maintaining its eleven power stations. Eskom engineers and technicians now are using RetrievalWare for secure, instant access to a repository of over 100 gigabytes of classified technical drawings, work procedures and instructions - detailing every aspect of running the plant, from the core reactors to the locks on the front door. Eskom generates 95% of South Africa's electricity (more than half of the electricity generated on the African continent) for its 3.2 million customers.

Prior to the installation of RetrievalWare, Eskom employed between two to three record specialists at each power station to store and file all relevant documentation. Engineers would need to request information from the records office, then wait for the records specialist to find, print and deliver the information. The process could be very time consuming. Today, retrieving documents from the archive is undertaken in real-time as engineers use RetrievalWare from their desktop, thus saving time and staffing costs and increasing the likelihood of finding the right information on the first attempt.

With RetrievalWare, Eskom also is able to protect the classified nature of its documentation as the software delivers a comprehensive authorization system that ensures that staff can only retrieve documents they are authorized to read. In addition, Eskom is able to update its maintenance records and instructions in real-time, ensuring that its workers have the latest information as new or improved techniques are developed.

"Eskom wanted to immediately, quickly and easily provide information to maintenance engineers and technicians on the ground - the guys who actually do the work in the plant. That's real, tangible knowledge sharing," said Keith Morgan, senior advisor for generation engineering business systems, Eskom. "Keeping track of and accessing up-to-date knowledge is a very dynamic situation and there are no second chances in a power station."

In the future, Eskom hopes to expand it search and retrieval system to include video footage used within staff training programs.

The solution was installed by Knowledge Focus, Convera's Southern Africa-based integration partner. Knowledge Focus has extensive experience in the field of knowledge management and digital asset management, and specialize in competitive intelligence and strategic market intelligence applications. Their customers include NEMISA (National Electronic Media Institute of South Africa), Kumba Resources, M-Net and the South African government.

About Convera's RetrievalWare

RetrievalWare is a high-performance multimedia, cross- and multi-lingual search system that allows broad flexibility and scalability for implementation across corporate intranets and extranets. RetrievalWare enables users to index and search a wide range of distributed information resources, including text, video, image and audio files, HTML, XML, over 200 proprietary document formats (such as word processors and publishing systems), relational database tables, document management systems, and groupware repositories. Advanced search capabilities include concept and keyword searching, pattern searching, and query-by-example. RetrievalWare excels in distributed client/server environments with thousands of users, documents, images, and/or multiple media assets.

About Convera

Convera is a leading provider of mission-critical enterprise search, retrieval and categorization solutions. Convera's RetrievalWare(R) solutions maximize return on investment in vast stores of unstructured information by providing highly scalable, fast, accurate and secure search across more than 200 forms of text, video, image and audio information, in more than 45 languages. More than 750 customers in over 29 countries rely on Convera's search solutions to power a broad range of mission-critical applications including enterprise portals, knowledge management, intelligence gathering, profiling, corporate policy compliance, regulatory compliance, customer service and more. For more information, contact Convera at 800-788-7758, via e-mail at info@convera.com or on the Web at www.convera.com.

This release, including any statements from Convera personnel, contains statements about Convera's future expectations, performance, plans, and prospects, as well as assumptions about future events. The reader is cautioned not to put undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, as these statements are subject to numerous factors and uncertainties, including without limitation, business and economic conditions and trends; continued success in technological advances; possible disruption in commercial activities caused by terrorist activity and armed conflict, such as changes in logistics and security arrangements; reduced customer demand relative to expectations; competitive factors; and other risk factors listed from time to time in the company's SEC reports. Actual results may differ materially from our expectations as the result of these and other important factors relating to Convera's business and product development efforts, which are further described in Convera's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These filings can be obtained from the SEC's website located at www.sec.gov. Any forward-looking statements are based on information available to Convera on the date of this release, and Convera assumes no obligation to update such statements.