Factiva Services to be Integrated into Microsoft Office 2003 Global Collection of News and Business Information To be Available From Within Word, Outlook, and Other Applications

Business Wire, March 10, 2003

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 10, 2003

Factiva(TM), a Dow Jones & Reuters Company, and Microsoft, Inc., today announced a relationship that will deliver critical news and business information from Factiva into the heart of the Microsoft Office 2003 suite.

The two companies will cooperate to provide information workers with quick and convenient ways to gain a confident view of the external business environment from within their daily workflow.

Factiva's first solution for Office 2003, Factiva News Search, will allow information workers to conduct research on Factiva's collection of nearly 8,000 sources directly from a report or presentation they're creating. For example, while drafting a competitive brief in Word 2003, competitive intelligence professionals can use Factiva News Search to quickly look up important industry trends from the most influential newspapers, journals, and newswires from around the world and easily insert that research into their document.

"In today's time-compressed workday, businesspeople are looking for ways to use their time more efficiently, while still feeling confident about the business decisions they're making," says Clare Hart, president and CEO of Factiva. "Office 2003 users now have a faster, more convenient way to check a fact or research a business topic and incorporate that intelligence into business documents and presentations."

Factiva will be a valuable source of news and business information in Office 2003 when it becomes commercially available in the third quarter of this year. Factiva News Search will be integrated into the Research Task Pane of all Microsoft Office 2003 applications, including Word 2003, Excel 2003, Access 2003, Outlook 2003, and PowerPoint 2003. Factiva News Search is currently available as part of the Microsoft Office 2003 Beta 2 trial.

Factiva's investment in a state-of-the-art platform based on XML and Web services enabled its integration with the Microsoft Office 2003 system. While evaluating beta test feedback, Factiva and Microsoft will also be researching innovative customer solutions that can be built on top of the Office 2003 System.

"Microsoft and Factiva share a common goal: to enable companies to enhance their business processes and improve employee productivity," says Joe Eschbach, Corporate Vice President, Information Worker Product Marketing Group, Microsoft. "With its innovative approach to content distribution, Factiva is pioneering knowledge solutions that help companies integrate news and business information into their daily workflow, which is demonstrated by their commitment to XML and Web services. This shared technology vision made it easy to integrate their service into Microsoft Office 2003."

"Content Web services are providing an early example of the value of XML and .NET Web services for business professionals," says Hadley Reynolds, Senior VP of Research Strategy at Delphi Group in Boston. "Those of us in research will find it easy to get used to Factiva just a click away on the Office Task Bar. And anyone who needs to reference authoritative business sources will benefit from transparent access to that information directly within their primary working environment. This is an important step in reducing the information thrash we all suffer from today."

"We view this as a long-term collaboration to solve some basic business issues in a modern way," says Ms. Hart. "Microsoft Office 2003 promises to be a major platform for exciting new enterprise productivity solutions. Having the support of the talented people at Microsoft joining us in this quest is very exciting."

About Factiva

Factiva, a Dow Jones & Reuters Company, provides world-class global content, including Dow Jones and Reuters newswires and The Wall Street Journal - unduplicated in a single service elsewhere. Factiva offers the only single content solution with multiple language interfaces and multilingual content covering nearly 8,000 sources.

Factiva's products and services help companies integrate news and business information into their daily workflow to increase organizational intelligence and leverage external and internal content within the knowledge management function. Factiva's content management and integration services are used by leading organizations around the world.

Built on industry standards and open architecture, Factiva products deliver flexible, extensible, customizable solutions to enable easy integration and use in the enterprise. Editorial and technical consulting, taxonomy application, integration expertise and e-learning programs reflect Factiva's innovative approach to delivering solutions beyond the content.

Factiva is one of KM World Magazine's "Top 100 Companies in Knowledge Management" and part of eContent Magazine's "Top 100 content companies to watch." Factiva is also recognized as a winner of the 2002 Software & Information Industry Association's Codie Awards in the Best Online Business, Corporate or Professional Information category.