Actuate Announces World's First e.Spreadsheet Server; New Solution Delivers Reports as Excel Spreadsheets Over the Web With Low Total Cost of Ownership.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 1, 2001

Actuate Corp. (Nasdaq:ACTU), the Information Delivery market leader, today launched its e.Spreadsheet Server as part of Actuate 5, Service Pack 2. Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server is the world's first multi-platform, server-based spreadsheet reporting solution, enabling customers to create, manage and deploy business reports as Excel documents over the Web.

Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server is a response to end user demands to receive business reports in the form of Excel spreadsheets over the Web. For example, Global 2000 companies manufacture daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly financial control reports. Many companies deliver these reports as PDF documents over the Web to managers and financial analysts. However, managers and analysts want these reports as Excel spreadsheets so they can further analyze the data and forward the results to other people. Developers of Excel-based reports are looking for a scalable way to refresh the data in the spreadsheets and alert the appropriate people that new reports are available. Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server meets the needs of end users and report developers out of the box.

"Global organizations are searching for methods of delivering reports in a very acceptable form to the masses of business users in their charge," said Dan Vesset, senior analyst, Business Intelligence & Data Warehousing at IDC. "Solutions that exploit a tool that's already available, to both simplify tough manual processes and deliver more robust functionality, will meet user demands in a compelling way. Obviously, use and familiarity with Excel is ubiquitous in the enterprise, so Actuate possesses a clear market opportunity."

"Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server is for every Global 2000 company that wants to deliver business reports as Excel spreadsheets over the Web to customers, partners and employees," said Pete Cittadini, Actuate president and CEO. "Information consumers -- from senior level executives to business managers and analysts -- are demanding the ability to do their own data analysis and email their reports to other people. Likewise, report developers require an automated means of populating these Excel documents with data from databases and enterprise applications. Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server addresses the needs of both information consumers and report developers, and enables Actuate to explore significant new business opportunities inside Global 2000 companies."

Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server -- Low Total Cost of Ownership and New Opportunities

Actuate expects that supporting a user community of 2,000 will result in an average total cost of ownership (TCO) of approximately $25 per user per year over a three year period. When deploying Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server, a company's TCO, which includes hardware, software and people costs, is expected to be less than $75,000 per year, or about one half of a `full-time equivalent' employee and roughly one quarter of the cost to build the system on their own and maintain it, according to estimates from customers.

"Industry analysts that we've briefed have suggested that Actuate, with its e.Spreadsheet Server, will create new opportunities inside of Global 2000 companies," said Nobby Akiha, Actuate vice president of marketing. "Most suggested that this market is currently not being served by traditional Business Intelligence vendors who are focused on selling their own proprietary analysis tools in competition with Excel. By offering the reports in a format that users already understand, Actuate can reinforce its reputation as delivering information via the Web with zero training. Some analysts suggested that an organization's power users and the business users would be the constituencies most eager for this capability with initial demand coming from Finance, Sales, Operations and Marketing staff responsible for reporting and analysis."

"Actuate has addressed the challenge of managing spreadsheet deployment and providing flexibility to users through its e.Spreadsheet Server," said Mark Smith, president, Full Circle Strategies. "By providing the first spreadsheet reporting server, Actuate enables a new class of Information Delivery that can drive the most flexible method of reporting through spreadsheets."

Actuate e.Spreadsheet Offerings

Actuate's e.Spreadsheet solution enables report developers to utilize a report designer to create e.Spreadsheet templates to fulfill end user requests. IT professionals can control access to the spreadsheets by leveraging site-specific security facilities like LDAP while utilizing the server to enforce archiving strategies. End users can use the Web to view updated e.Spreadsheets, or to update and view them on demand. They may also save and modify Excel spreadsheets and forward them to other users via email. Associated with the launch of Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server, Actuate is releasing the following set of products:

      --  Actuate e.Spreadsheet Designer -- enables report developers to
        create e.Spreadsheet templates that specify the data sources
        and formats of the Excel spreadsheet reports. In addition, the
        developer can provide links within spreadsheet cells to other
        e.Spreadsheets or e.Reports and add parameters in the
        spreadsheets to allow end-users to create new variations on
        demand.

      --  Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server -- allows report developers to
        manufacture Excel spreadsheets on a time or event-based
        schedule, automatically notify end users of updates, keep a
        particular number of versions, and apply archiving rules.
        Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server is a multi-platform solution that
        can access enterprise information sources and tie into a
        company's security system (e.g. LDAP).

      --  Actuate e.Reporting Option -- enhances the e.Spreadsheet
        Server to allow report developers to deploy e.Reports created
        in the Actuate e.Report Designer Professional.

There is also an option for existing Actuate e.Reporting Server customers to add e.Spreadsheet functionality.

Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server -- Benefits

Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server addresses the needs of customers whose end users, report developers and IT professionals require a server-based system for delivering business data as Excel spreadsheets over the Web. Benefits customers might expect to realize when using Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server include:

      --  Global 2000 companies can expect to streamline business
        processes and improve the satisfaction of customers,
        distributors/suppliers and employees by providing key
        information in a familiar analysis format -- Excel.

      --  Packaged application software companies can expect to increase
        revenue opportunities by expanding usage of their products by
        providing information over the Web in a format that broadens
        their audience.

      --- End users can receive reports in familiar Excel format that
        enables them to refine, analyze and model the data.
        Additionally end users can save reports to their own computer,
        modify and email these reports to other end users, and link to
        other relevant data and large report documents. In addition
        they can use Excel to specify new reports.

      --  Report developers can save money from a lower TCO while
        responding to end user requests for information in Excel
        spreadsheets. Now, the process of manufacturing regular reports
        can be automated without a custom `server' built and
        maintained by IT. All of this results in freeing up report
        developer time to conduct additional analysis.

      --  IT professionals can respond to end user requests for Excel
        output while maintaining control over access, data and the
        integrity of results. Doing so enables IT professionals to
        save time by having analysts and end users produce reports.

Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server -- Industry Support

"Previously, automated report generation has been the domain of experienced programmers," said Rich MacDonald, developer/analyst for software development and consultant Applied Reasoning. "This is a crucial bottleneck for most organizations and it locks out the users who need to create and modify their own reports. These same users can't program but they can sure use Excel -- it's the reporting tool they use now. Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server gives us the best of both worlds: users can write their own reports and IT has central management. Too often 'scalability' addresses only the technical architecture. Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server extends scalability to the business process realities as well."

"As a provider of business financing solutions to small and medium size business owners, LeaseLoan has established a network of vendors and affiliates to help penetrate our target markets in the most efficient means possible," said Mario Hubert, CTO at LeaseLoan.com. "Our goal is to help our business partners become more successful in driving adoption of our offering. Gaining business intelligence is imperative because the need to understand where efficiencies can be gained to increase the bottom line of our partners is essential to their survival in today's economy. After considering the diverse audience for our solution, we realized that we will need to deploy a tool that can be mastered quickly, with no technology investment, while providing all the necessary data analysis features required by our partners. With the release of their Excel-based solution, Actuate meets these requirements with ease. Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server will allow LeaseLoan to deploy a simple to use yet powerful tool to perform BI activities."

"WhiteLight has embedded Actuate technology in WhiteLight iApplicationServer, the reporting component of WhiteLight's platform, with excellent response from customers," said Rich Ghiossi, vice president of marketing at WhiteLight, an Actuate eBusiness Application partner. "With the added functionality of Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server, WhiteLight's customers will have even greater flexibility in terms of delivering information to users in a familiar format: Excel spreadsheets."

Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server -- Pricing and Availability

Actuate e.Spreadsheet Designer is priced on a per developer basis. Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server and Actuate e.Reporting Option are priced on a per CPU basis. Existing Actuate customers can add e.Spreadsheet capabilities through an e.Spreadsheet Option. Through the end of 2001, Actuate is providing introductory pricing incentives. Call Actuate Sales at 800/914-2259 for more details. Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server and Actuate 5, Service Pack 2 are now generally available.

Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server can be deployed on Windows NT, Windows 2000, and all popular Unix platforms including Solaris, HP/UX and AIX. It also supports popular browsers, including Netscape versions 4, 5 and 6 and Internet Explorer versions 4, 5 and 6. Actuate e.Spreadsheet Server provides international language support for over 50 countries. As a result, financial reports using any currency can be viewed over the Web, for example.

Actuate e.Spreadsheet Designer can read and write the most popular versions of Excel -- 5.0, 7.0, 2000 and XP. It is available in a variety of languages -- U.S. and U.K. English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Japanese.

About Actuate Corp.

Actuate Corp. is the leading provider of Information Delivery solutions for Global 2000 companies and packaged application software vendors. Actuate builds solutions for customer applications including client reporting, key performance indicators, CRM, e-Procurement and Net marketplaces. Actuate's Information Delivery solutions make it easy to extract operational data from disparate systems and publish secure, interactive and perfectly formatted content that is seamlessly integrated with the rest of a company's Web site. Actuate content can also be printed, exchange data with other applications and accessed using Excel spreadsheets. By instantly delivering personalized content to 100,000s of end users -- without downloads -- companies using Actuate can increase revenue, reduce costs and improve customer service. Actuate has over 1,300 direct customers and over 170 OEM partners including American Express, AT&T, Bank of America, BMC Software, Chase Manhattan Corp., Clarify, Lucent Technologies, WorldCom, PeopleSoft and Siebel.

Founded in 1993, Actuate has headquarters in South San Francisco, and has offices worldwide. For more information on Actuate, visit the company's Web site at www.actuate.com.

Note to Editors: Actuate is a registered trademark of Actuate Corp. e.Reporting is a trademark of Actuate Corp. Excel is a trademark of Microsoft Corp.