Actuate Corporation Announces Java Strategy; Industry Leading Information Delivery Company Sets Sights on Emerging Market for Java-Based E-Business Platforms.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 22, 2000

Actuate(R) Corporation (Nasdaq:ACTU), the information delivery market leader, today announced its strategy for tapping the emerging Java e-Business platform market.

"The Java platform is a large potential market for Actuate," said Pete Cittadini, CEO and president of Actuate. "Our Global 2000 and OEM customers have been asking for complete Java support. We hope to leverage the rapid adoption of Java e-Business platforms to accelerate growth for our information delivery solutions."

Java technologies have gained broad industry acceptance, the result of which is an emerging and high-growth market for Java tools used in building e-Business applications. Actuate plans to take several steps in the near term to provide information delivery solutions that are well integrated with the Java platform to further fuel company growth.

In addressing the Java e-Business platform market, Actuate will initially do three things:

-- In today's e-Business environments, companies are increasingly

implementing business logic around data stores using

Enterprise JavaBean (EJB) components. Actuate plans to provide

the ability to call Java methods directly from Actuate

development products, thereby simplifying access to Java data

sources.

-- For customers who wish to do all of their development in a 100

percent pure Java environment, Actuate plans to announce,

later this year, versions of its information delivery products

that provide 100 percent pure Java content creation and

management facilities for Web developers.

-- To further solidify its position within the e-Business

platform space, Actuate plans to announce strategic

relationships with leading Application Server companies, so

that customers can have seamless integration with Actuate

Information Delivery products.

Actuate is capitalizing on its acquisition of Java tools company, EnterpriseSoft, made earlier this year to support Java. The acquisition of EnterpriseSoft was the first step in Actuate's strategy to support customers and packaged application software vendors developing e-Business environments based on the popular Java platform.

Market Background

A critical component of the e-Business platform, Information Delivery is defined as the practice of extracting content from multiple data sources and publishing this high-value business information on the Internet for use by customers, partners and employees. Information Delivery is essential to any company that wants to increase revenue, reduce costs and improve customer service.

"Strategic e-Business applications aimed at customers, partners and/or employees are hot right now," said Dave Folger, senior program director for Web & Collaboration Strategies, META Group. "Information Delivery should be a key part of any company's e-Business platform, along with Content Management and Application Servers. Actuate is acknowledged as the key player in the Information Delivery market."

According to IDC, the market for application server software platforms was at about $1 billion worldwide in 1999. It is estimated to be almost $1.8 billion in 2000, and to grow to over $11 billion by the year 2004. This is testimony to the importance of these products, but what is perhaps as interesting, according to IDC, is that over the past year, virtually every application server vendor has worked to ensure that their products support Java. And more specifically, that these products support the J2EE specification. IDC believes this is strong evidence that the role that Java will play in future IT systems will be significant and extremely important.

Further, IDC has developed a model that demonstrates the growth in Java usage as measured by developer seats. In 1999, in IDC's estimates, there were about 1.1 million Java developer seats worldwide. While this number is significantly less than the number for C and C++ (3.2 million) and Visual Basic (6.2 million), it will grow at an average annual rate of about 40 percent, versus about 9.5 percent for C/C++ and about two percent for Visual Basic. For the Web -- which represents an environment where platform independence is critical, and where middle-tier application servers are employed -- Java will be seen as a virtual standard development and deployment platform.

About Actuate Corporation

Actuate Corporation is the market-leading provider of information delivery solutions for Global 2000 companies, Internet start-ups and packaged application software vendors. Actuate builds solutions for customer applications including e-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. 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. A strategic component of every company's e-Business infrastructure, Actuate has nearly 900 direct customers and 90 OEM partners including American Express, AT&T, Bank of America, BMC Software, Chase Manhattan Corporation, Clarify, Enron, Lucent Technologies, MCI WorldCom, PeopleSoft, Siebel and US West.

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

Note to Editors: Actuate, Live Report Documents, Report Encyclopedia and ReportCast are registered trademarks of Actuate Corporation. e.Report, e.Reporting, Live Report Extensions, ReportBlast, SmartSearch, Transporter, Virtual Report Distribution and XML Reports are trademarks of Actuate Corporation. Java and Enterprise JavaBean are trademarks of Sun Microsystems.