Actuate Outperforms Crystal for Enterprise Reporting on Clustered Hardware; Third Party Study Confirms Actuate 7 Excels Over Crystal Enterprise 9 for Cluster Scalability.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 11, 2003

Actuate Corporation (Nasdaq:ACTU), the world leader in scalable Business Intelligence Applications, today announced that third-party interactive reporting tests have confirmed that Actuate 7 running on a server cluster of three machines supports 48% more concurrent virtual users than Crystal Enterprise 9 does in a six machine cluster of equivalent hardware. Actuate's ability to support a greater number of users using half of the hardware is an enormous economy that can be passed on to customers considering whether to deploy Actuate 7 or Crystal Enterprise 9. As repeated third party studies have shown, Actuate has consistently shown better performance on less hardware and cleaner linear scalability as compared to Crystal Enterprise.

The benchmark conclusions continue to underscore Actuate's ability to provide the most scalable enterprise reporting solution in the industry: one that efficiently grows to meet the information demands of user populations of any size and maximizes the efficiency of hardware processing power in doing so. Actuate 7's clustering capability has no single point of failure, relies on no third party clustering technology and provides near linear scalability so that IT departments can easily plan for increasing user populations. The benchmark study was conducted by National Technical Systems (NTS) (Nasdaq:NTSC), a leading provider of quality and conformance testing for high technology products in a wide variety of industries in the U.S., Europe and Japan, which validated the test environment, gathered data using industry standard tools and procedures, and impartially formulated a conclusion based on the test results.

NTS successfully executed an interactive enterprise reporting benchmark that measures the performance and scalability of Actuate 7 iServer and Crystal Enterprise 9 in a clustered server environment. The benchmark was conducted on identical hardware and operating system, with identical test scenarios, using a commercial benchmark driver.

    Tests results showed that:

    --  On a 3-machine cluster, Actuate 7 iServer achieved 63% to 166%
        greater service throughput on all three reporting operations
        in the benchmark: batch report generation, on-demand
        reporting, and cached report viewing. When the hardware
        resource is doubled, Actuate increases its performance lead
        further from 74% to 228% greater service throughput over
        Crystal Enterprise 9.

    --  The throughput advantage of Actuate 7 iServer over Crystal
        Enterprise 9 is attributed to its 88% scaling factor when
        doubling the hardware 3-machine clusters to form a 6-machine
        cluster. Actuate 7 supported 740 concurrent virtual users on a
        3-machine cluster configuration, and 1,392 concurrent virtual
        users in a 6-machine configuration. Crystal Enterprise 9, on
        the other hand only supported 300 concurrent virtual users on
        the 3-machine cluster, and 500 on the 6-machine cluster, which
        represents a scaling factor of 66%. Note that the 3-machine
        Actuate cluster supports 48% more concurrent virtual users
        than the 6-machine Crystal cluster.

    --  In the 3-machine cluster:

        --  Actuate 7 iServer's throughput in view transaction and
            on-demand transactions was 144% and 166% higher than
            Crystal Enterprise 9 respectively

        --  Actuate 7 iServer was able to support 740 active users,
            while Crystal enterprise 9 supported 300 active users.
            Actuate supported 147% more users than Crystal

    --  Actuate 7 iServer achieved consistently high CPU utilization
        (95%) on the main report servers, while Crystal Enterprise 9
        showed a decreasing CPU utilization (from 94% to 70%) on the
        main report servers going from the 3-machine cluster to the
        6-machine cluster.

"NTS can predict, based on the test results gathered, that Actuate 7 iServer would further increase its performance lead over Crystal Enterprise 9 when more hardware resources are added to the system, due to Actuate's scalability advantage," said Osman Sakr, division president of National Technical Systems Computer Product Testing Labs. "We ensured that this study was unbiased and the simulated tests are similar to real life use case scenarios. This study guides those who are seeking to implement a clustered reporting environment toward the most scalable solution."

"Actuate has clearly demonstrated its ability to scale efficiently within a clustered environment," said Nobby Akiha, vice president of Worldwide Marketing for Actuate Corporation. "The findings of this study underscore that Actuate customers can be confident that as their user populations increase, their environment can easily accommodate growing demand for reporting."

The complete benchmark study with full details on test methodology and results is available for download at: http://www.actuate.com/info/a7vsce9clusterc.asp.

About National Technical Systems, Inc.

National Technical Systems, Inc. is a business-to-business services company providing organizations in the aerospace, defense, information technology (IT) and high technology markets integrated testing, certification, quality registration, systems evaluation and engineering solutions. For additional information about National Technical Systems, visit its web site at http://www.ntscorp.com.

About Actuate Corporation

Actuate Corporation is the world leader in scalable Business Intelligence applications. Actuate's Information Application Platform is the foundation on which Global 9000 organizations (companies with annual revenues greater than $1 billion) and packaged application software vendors create reporting and analytics applications that scale to empower 100 percent of their user community inside and outside the firewall. These Information Applications include Business Performance Management (BPM) dashboards, Information Portals as well as business analytic, enterprise reporting and spreadsheet reporting applications. Information Applications built with Actuate enable companies to increase their business agility, improve customer and partner relationships, adhere to corporate governance policies, and increase revenues while leveraging existing technology assets. When tested against other business intelligence products, Actuate's Information Application Platform has been proven to offer industry-leading scalability, the best performance, lowest Total Cost of Ownership. Actuate has over 2,200 direct customers and 300 OEM partners in a range of industries including financial services, pharmaceuticals, insurance, and distribution services, as well as the government sector.

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 http://www.actuate.com.

Actuate is a registered trademark of Actuate Corporation. e.Reporting and e.Spreadsheet are trademarks of Actuate Corporation. Other company names and trademarks are trademarks of their respective companies.

Note to Editors: Results based on Actuate 7 v. Crystal 9 benchmark conducted by National Test Systems in September 2003