Actional Utilizes Microsoft .NET for Deployment of Enterprise-Class Web Services.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 27, 2002

Actional Web Services Technology Featured in Bill Gates' Keynote

Address at Launch of Visual Studio .NET 

Actional (www.actional.com), a provider of cross-platform XML Web services infrastructure software, has been named one of 12 Microsoft .NET Emerging Business Partners. Additionally, Actional technology was part of a stage demonstration at the Visual Studio .NET launch during the keynote address by Microsoft Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates at the VSLive! Conference in San Francisco on Feb. 13.

For more than a decade, Actional has provided Global 2000 companies with industry-leading software and adapters for solving critical integration challenges. Actional's groundbreaking Web services product, SOAPswitch(TM) -- the Web Services Gateway, builds on that successful expertise and embodies the Microsoft .NET vision to help organizations more easily accelerate their move into XML Web services -- and quickly reap the benefits of XML-based transactions. By allowing applications to communicate and share data, regardless of the operating system or programming language, Web services allow companies to capitalize on their existing IT infrastructure by making it available through Internet technology.

SOAPswitch works by residing within an organization's IT infrastructure, and allows internal staff, customers or suppliers access to existing packaged, legacy and custom-built applications such as accounting, inventory or booking via Internet technology, within a centralized security and management model. With SOAPswitch, for the first time, companies can introduce and expand their Web service offerings while centrally maintaining their choice of robust security and management capabilities across the enterprise.

"Actional is utilizing the promise of Web services and vision of .NET to enable companies for the first time to integrate their complex and heterogeneous information infrastructures and processes," said Dan'l Lewin, vice president of Microsoft .NET Business Development. "Actional has been providing application integration products for years, and SOAPswitch builds on this leadership with a set of application connectivity adapters that deliver tremendous value to customers."

For its shared vision and significant contributions as a core member of the .NET development family, Microsoft named Actional a .NET Emerging Business Partner. The Microsoft .NET Platform includes a comprehensive family of products -- clients that power smart devices, services, servers, and tools -- designed to support XML and incorporate Internet industry standards designed to deliver a seamless user experience, anytime, anywhere and on any device. Microsoft and leading companies like Actional are providing the infrastructure for companies to easily transform their already existing enterprise applications into Web services.

"As active venture capitalists, we at NEA see most everything before it comes to market, and so far, no one we have seen has a better Web Services offering than .NET combined with Actional's SOAPswitch," Scott Sandell, General Partner, New Enterprise Associates.

"Actional shares the .NET vision that Web services technology will shake up the IT industry by making the integration of business processes more efficient," said John Orcutt, CEO of Actional. "We designed SOAPswitch based on the feedback we've received over the years from our Global 2000 customers. They need a simple way to integrate complex homegrown and legacy applications and a way to easily make them available to all aspects of their business."

More information on SOAPswitch can be found at www.actional.com/cgibin/templates/body/default.cfm?m=SOAPswitch.

About the .NET Framework

The Microsoft .NET Framework is a platform for building, deploying and running XML Web services and applications. It provides a highly productive, standards-based, multi-language environment for integrating existing investments with next-generation applications and services as well as the agility to solve the challenges of deployment and operation of Internet-scale applications. The .NET Framework consists of two main parts: the common language runtime and a hierarchical set of unified class libraries that includes a next-generation Web application environment, ASP.NET; a loosely coupled data access subsystem, ADO.NET; and an environment for building rich Windows(R)-based applications, Windows Forms.

About Actional

Actional is a provider of XML Web services infrastructure software. Web services allow companies to fully exploit existing IT investments by delivering IT functions -- such as accounts, ERP, sales or workflow -- via internet-based standards.

Actional's Web services solution, SOAPswitch, instantly transforms any IT function into a Web service and is the only such solution that combines both integration and management of Web services. It automatically connects with multiple back-end enterprise systems as well as centralizing the management, monitoring and security of the resulting Web services. This enables companies to accelerate the adoption of Web services and leapfrog the complexities and costs of traditional integration methods.

Actional's customers include Dresdner Bank AG, Mobilkom Austria, Sabre Inc., Siemens, Swisscom and other major corporations. The company is backed by ArrowPath Venture Capital, Government of Singapore Investment Corporation -- Special Investments (GIC SI), International Capital Partners, NeoCarta Ventures, New Enterprise Associates and SAIC Venture Capital Corporation.

More information about the company can be found at www.actional.com.