Acta e2e -- Speeding B2B eCommerce With Rapid Access to the Back-Office.

Business/High-Tech Editors

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 1, 2000

Hunter Douglas Uses Acta's Pioneering Data-Caching

Technology To Share Key Back-Office Data With Trading Partners

Acta Technology, Inc., the leader in enterprise data-caching, today announced the beta release of two core components in its e2e (enterpise-to-eCommerce) product suite: ActaWorks RealTime (ActaWorksRT)(TM) and Acta Customer Order eCache(TM). Making full use of Acta's pioneering data-caching technology, the new products are designed to help companies improve their business relationships by providing rapid access via the Web to back-office data from ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems such as SAP (NYSE:SAP).

Acta also announced that Hunter Douglas (Amsterdam exchange:HUDN), a diversified global enterprise well known for the manufacturing of window fashions, will use Acta's solutions to share data from SAP/R3 with external assemblers and customers.

Data caching: Closing the eCommerce Data Gap

Acta's innovative eCaches(TM) are easy-to-implement, packaged databases that link eCommerce front-ends with rich data locked away in back-office systems. With Acta's eCaches, companies can liberate their back-office data and make it accessible to their customers and trading partners. eCaches rapidly deliver the data that customers and trading partners need for business-to-business (B2B) eCommerce -- for example, order status, product availability, year-to-date purchases, open invoices and related early-payment incentives.

Much like caches that speed the delivery of Web content on the Internet, eCaches provide B2B eCommerce applications rapid access to essential back-office data with relatively minimal performance impact on the back-office system. ActaWorksRT -- a high-performance data movement-and-management platform -- refreshes eCache data from back-office ERP systems in both real time and batch mode. Leading eCommerce applications can use ActaWorksRT to gain access to ERP data through XML interfaces.

Rapid, real-time access to ERP data has been one of the biggest challenges for B2B eCommerce.

&uot;The truth is, ERP systems cannot directly handle the data demands of business-to-business eCommerce,&uot; said Wayne Eckerson, a senior analyst with the Patricia Seybold Group. &uot;Acta's eCaching technology solves a major problem for making data in the thousands of SAP systems that dominate the back-end in just about every industry around the world more accessible. Rather than going directly to SAP for data queries, Acta's eCaching gives eCommerce users a quick and easy way to access the data they need.&uot;

Competitive advantage: eCommerce-Ready Data

With future plans for other Acta solutions, Hunter Douglas will jumpstart its eCommerce program by deploying two eCaches: the Customer Billing eCache(TM) (announced earlier this month) and the new Customer Order eCache. The two eCaches will allow Hunter Douglas assemblers and customers to view up-to-the-minute information such as order status, delivery status, product-catalog pricing, and billing.

&uot;In planning our business-to-business eCommerce strategy, it became clear to us that we needed to provide rapid and easy access to crucial information that was locked in our enterprise-wide SAP system,&uot; said Bob Cook, Vice President Administration/Chief Information Officer for Hunter Douglas. &uot;After carefully evaluating possible approaches to the problem, Acta's real-time eCaching technology emerged as the best solution for us offering a winning combination of exceptional speed and usability.&uot;

&uot;To be a true business-to-business eCommerce player, you need to provide easy access to key back-office data,&uot; continued Cook. &uot;Acta's cutting-edge eCaching technology will allow us to do just that. With Acta, Hunter Douglas will be able to share up-to-the-minute information that is essential for maintaining good business relationships over the Internet.&uot;

Hunter Douglas also expects to achieve higher levels of customer service, greater efficiency in its operations, and faster order turn-around time.

&uot;The Acta solution will give us a true competitive advantage, and allow us to maintain a leadership position in our core business,&uot; said Cook.

About eCaches

eCaches are &uot;out-of-the box,&uot; packaged databases that can be rapidly deployed to hook eCommerce applications to ERP systems. Each eCache contains pre-defined ActaWorksRT data extraction jobs that automatically populate and continuously update the cache with a company's ERP system. Unlike eCommerce approaches that rely solely on direct ERP access, an eCache stages critical ERP data in a relational database and updates it in real-time to ensure rapid, 24x7 access to current and historical information contained in back-end systems with minimal ERP impact.

About ActaWorks RealTime (RT)

ActaWorksRT is tightly integrated with ActaWorks, the award-winning data movement platform for ERP that Acta has been shipping for over two years. ActaWorksRT offers a data movement-and-management platform for integrating, staging, and managing the real-time operational data needed for eCommerce applications. The ActaWorksRT architecture intelligently combines real time data staging with direct ERP access to provide application performance, availability, and scalability unattainable through direct access only.

About Acta Technology, Inc.

Acta Technology, Inc., the leader in enterprise data-caching, provides Internet data infrastructure for eCommerce and business intelligence. The Acta e2e (enterprise-to-eCommerce) product suite helps companies to liberate their information assets from back-office systems for more profitable and enduring business relationships. For internal business intelligence, Acta sells RapidMarts(TM), a set of pre-configured data warehouses for business analysis in areas such as sales, costs, accounting, human resources, and inventory.

Acta is an active member of the SAP Complementary Software Program (CSP) and PeopleSoft Global Alliance Program. ActaWorks has been certified by PeopleSoft, and the Acta SAP BW interface has been certified by SAP. Acta's customers include Chevron (NYSE:CHV), Guinness, Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE:HWP), IBM (NYSE:IBM), Monsanto (NYSE:MTC), Shell Chemical Company, and other Global 1000 companies. Acta is headquartered at 1001 Elwell Court, Palo Alto, CA 94303, and has international offices in London, Frankfurt, Paris, and Amersfoort (the Netherlands). Sales and partnership inquiries should be directed to Acta's toll-free phone number 1-888-613-3282. For more information, visit the company's Web site at http://www.acta.com.

Acta, ActaWorks, ActaWorks RealTime, e2e, eCaches, and RapidMarts are trademarks of Acta Technology, Inc. All other product and company names mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.