Actuate Unveils Vision to Empower 100% of Users with Direct Access to Enterprise Information.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 24, 2003

Actuate 7 Information Application Platform Allows Companies to

Build and Manage Highly Scalable, Customized Information Applications

Actuate Corporation (NASDAQ:ACTU), the world leader in empowering enterprise users with Information Applications, today announced Actuate 7, the industry's first Information Application Platform that allows Global 9000 organizations to cost-effectively build and centrally manage multiple mission-critical applications such as Business Performance Management (BPM) dashboards, information portals, business analytic applications, and interactive reporting applications. This unique platform provides user interfaces, which are appropriate for the majority of the enterprise and extended enterprise user communities without sacrificing IT infrastructure control.

Global IT organizations are struggling with the need to provide broad access to enterprise information - both inside and outside the firewall. Employees, customers and business partners want immediate access to information generated from multiple data sources, but IT departments also need to retain control over data integrity, security and system performance. In addition, current IT spending restrictions demand that solutions demonstrate a low Total Cost of Ownership, and integrate into and leverage any existing IT environment. Actuate addresses these needs by delivering a solution that allows companies to purchase and deploy a single platform that supports many customized applications that can be utilized by more than 80 percent of the user community.

"Companies can't afford to purchase, deploy and maintain applications that only perform one function for a single user community," said Pete Cittadini, president and CEO of Actuate. "IT departments need a cost-effective solution to quickly build and manage highly customized Information Applications that can be used by their entire user community. Our vision for Actuate 7 is to empower IT departments to build highly customized Information Applications that easily fit into their enterprise infrastructure, and meet the needs of 100 percent of users."

The Actuate 7 Information Application Platform will be rolled out to the market in three phases with the overarching vision of 'Empowering 100% of users without sacrificing IT control.' The first release of Actuate 7, code-named Shasta, empowers business users with the industry's first ad-hoc query and report creation tools that require virtually no training. The subsequent releases of Actuate 7 will add tools for the power user community, leverage a service oriented architecture (SOA) to shorten development time, continue to widen Actuate's industry lead in scalability, and further drive down TCO.

"People often draw a BI user pyramid when trying to sort out the various types of business users or end users for reporting and analytic systems, as well as the relative number of one end-user type vs. another. Building the BI user pyramid from the bottom-up -- with a focus on reporting, not analysis -- achieves realistic and sustainable results, while containing the costs and complexity of analytics. The bottom-up strategy for defining end-user requirements and matching them to enabling technologies encompasses more BI end-user types and far greater numbers of end users than the top-down approach. This practice serves the broadest majority of business end users." (Source: Phil Russom, research director at Giga Information Group. "Building from the Bottom Up" Intelligent Enterprise, August 12, 2002)

Actuate 7 is uniquely designed to provide customers with a highly flexible and scalable environment. The Actuate 7 platform consists of a development environment, a server, and user empowerment products appropriate for all user segments inside and outside an organization.

Development Environment - Actuate 7 provides customers with an object-oriented programming environment that allows quick development and deployment of highly customized Information Applications. Actuate's development capabilities enable IT departments to build a wide variety of applications including information portals, performance management dashboards, business analytic applications and interactive reporting applications.

iServer - Actuate iServer provides the industry's most complete and powerful infrastructure for disseminating high volumes of enterprise information to potentially millions of employees, customers, partners, and other audiences. It features an open, service-oriented architecture for easy integration with any enterprise portal, Web service, e-Business application, and data source. Multiple Information Applications can be centrally managed using the Actuate iServer, reducing costs associated with deploying and managing multiple Information Applications required by large organizations. iServer provides unparalleled scalability, tested to 24,000 concurrent users, with 24x7 availability, which ensures that all users receive the information they need rapidly, with the security and manageability that Global 9000 organizations expect.

User Empowerment - Actuate 7 provides a set of products that extend Web pages and server-managed Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to empower users with enterprise information in interactive and intuitive formats of their choice. Power, business, casual and extended-enterprise users can choose to receive HTML, DHTML, PDF, Microsoft Excel or XML content. Users can automatically update, transact or trigger workflows from within their personalized information view. The Actuate platform is the first solution to empower users with analysis and reporting products that leverage their existing expertise and skill sets.

Pricing and Availability

Actuate 7 will be available in a limited production version at the end of March, and is scheduled for general availability at the end of April. Pricing for Actuate 7 starts at $35,000 per CPU, or $495 per named user.

ABOUT ACTUATE CORPORATION

Actuate Corporation is the world leader in empowering enterprise users with Information 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 Business Performance Management (BPM) dashboards, Information Portals as well as business analytic, enterprise reporting and spreadsheet reporting applications. Information Applications built with Actuate can empower 100 percent of an organization's user community inside and outside the firewall, and thereby allow 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 alternatives, Actuate's Information Application Platform has been proven to offer the best performance, highest scale and lowest Total Cost of Ownership. Actuate has over 2,000 direct customers and 300 OEM partners in the financial services, pharmaceutical, insurance, logistics and government industries among other sectors.

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

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.