Exostar and Hubspan Align to Integrate Systems and Business Processes in the Aerospace and Defense Market

Business Wire, May 19, 2004

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

HERNDON, Va. & SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 19, 2004

Exostar, the global Internet exchange for the aerospace and defense industry, and Hubspan, a leading integration solutions provider, today announced an alliance to deliver seamless integration technology and services to aerospace and defense (A&D) buyers and suppliers. The joint solution enables an integrated connection between buyer's and supplier's back-office systems across the Exostar platform providing complete, any-to-any, many-to-many business process integration.

Exponential growth in transaction volume among Exostar trading partners is driving increased demand for robust, flexible integration options to complement Exostar's hosted solutions. The alliance unites Exostar's highly secure infrastructure & suite of hosted applications with Hubspan's comprehensive integration services delivering a complete value chain automation solution to the market. The solution provides benefits to both Exostar buyers and suppliers enabling them to leverage existing system and infrastructure investments to interoperate with A&D and non-A&D trading partners.

"The combination of Exostar's industry leading solutions with Hubspan's broad integration capabilities and experience is a natural fit that together bring tremendous value to the aerospace and defense market as well as other market segments that interact with A&D," said Alan Higginson, Hubspan CEO.

The partnership simplifies the entire integration process offering a wide range of technical options, thus lowering the barrier to participation and creating a compelling value proposition for process automation.

"To successfully deliver supply chain integration solutions, industry consortia need to be able to exchange data and deploy applications efficiently and effectively," commented David Metcalfe, vice president-research director, Forrester Research. "The partnership between Exostar and Hubspan supports this view by combining Exostar's application platform with Hubspan's interoperative data exchange services to deliver the right combination of applications and infrastructure to the market. As a result, the alliance will lower the barriers to participate and make it more cost-effective for buyers and suppliers to get connected."

Under the alliance agreement, Hubspan services are embedded within Exostar's procurement products and services, providing a comprehensive and flexible integration infrastructure for secure transaction management. "Leveraging Hubspan's integration technology allows Exostar to further our commitment to our customers and their trading partners by removing barriers to supply chain integration," commented Bill Angeloni, Exostar CEO. "Their technology is an important enabler of our solutions, making it faster and easier for trading partners of all sizes and levels of technical sophistication to interact with one another."

About Exostar

Exostar is an electronic business and managed solutions provider built by and for the $400 billion global aerospace and defense industry. Exostar connects manufacturers, suppliers and customers in a highly secure virtual marketplace for sourcing, commerce and collaboration. Exostar creates value for its members through a set of Internet hosted solutions that standardize e-business processes, reduce processing costs and improve cycle times. Exostar's founding partners are BAE SYSTEMS (LSE: BA), Boeing (NYSE: BA), Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE: LMT), Raytheon Co. (NYSE: RTN, RTNB) and Rolls-Royce (LSE: RR). For more information, please visit www.exostar.com.

About Hubspan

As a leading integration solutions provider, Hubspan delivers on the promise of the Business Internet. Hubspan's service-based integration solutions enable companies around the world to exchange mission-critical information with their partners, providing maximum security and world-class reliability. Robust standards-based technology combined with rapid implementation and superior service deliver strategic value to trusted customer relationships. Headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Hubspan is trusted to deliver by industry leading customers including The Boeing Company, Graybar, and Tradeplace. Additional information can be found at www.hubspan.com.