Actify Enters Microsoft's Collaborative Product Development Program.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Program Provides Customized Technology Solutions to Help Ensure Successful Collaborative Product Development for Manufacturers and Their Supply Chains

Actify Inc., the worldwide leader in client-server digital design communications solutions for the high technology, automotive, aerospace, industrial automation and discrete manufacturing industries, today announced that the company is part of Microsoft's Collaborative Product Development (CPD) Program. Unveiled in October 2004, Microsoft's CPD Program is designed to help companies understand how to better leverage existing technology investments to enhance successful collaboration for product development now and in the future. Each customized solution provides a flexible and reliable platform to the enterprise so it can integrate operations with partners and suppliers for better communications. The goal is to help manufacturers deliver products to market faster in today's competitive environment, while reducing product development costs.

"Effective collaborative product development allows companies to reduce the time it takes to bring products to market, ultimately lowering the overall development costs," said Don Richardson, director, Manufacturing Industry Unit at Microsoft Corp. "Adding Actify's SpinFire product line to our CPD program adds additional capabilities to our solution ecosystem, enabling us to help our customers improve communication and collaboration to manufacturers throughout the course of the design development, manufacturing and maintenance processes."

Developed with extensive feedback from Microsoft customers and partners, the Microsoft Program for CPD provides an innovative approach that allows manufacturers to take full advantage of their existing technology investments while improving their ability to collaborate on product development and design data as well as seamlessly access information that allows for faster and better decision-making. The Program includes leading PLM solution providers, all of whom are delivering solutions and services that address collaborative product development challenges and use Microsoft technologies such as Windows Server 2003, BizTalk Server 2004, SQL Server 2000, and Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003.

"Microsoft's Program for CPD is a significant step forward in addressing the industry-wide issue of delivering an effective collaborative product development platform for manufacturers," said Randy Ochs, president and CEO of Actify. "Our customers have seen first hand that Actify's solutions accelerate the product development process by enabling design and product teams to more effectively communicate digital design information. We're delighted to be part of this innovative program with Microsoft."

Actify's Suite of Products address a key component of collaborative product development by delivering digital design communication solutions, facilitating paperless distribution of complex design data. SpinFire supports files created in any major CAD file format converting them into an easy to access, compressed and secure file that can have additional 2D and 3D design files added to it, creating a single data pack for a given design project. This allows manufacturers to communicate project data efficiently and easily through their enterprise and supply chain, with a cost effective set of tools. This streamlines the communication process and ultimately increases productivity and cuts costs.

About Actify Inc.

Founded in 1996, Actify Inc. is a privately held, award-winning global leader of client/server CAD visualization solutions. Actify's SpinFire product line provides the lowest total cost of ownership with the highest scalability across manufacturing industries and through their supply chains. The Actify SpinFire solution is sold through authorized distributors and Value Added Resellers in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific. Actify is headquartered in San Francisco, California. For more information please visit www.actify.com or call 415-227-3800.

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