Applied OLAP, Inc. Earns Hyperion's Essbase-Ready Gold Certification.

Business Editors & Technology Writers

HUNTSVILLE, Ala.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 20, 2001

Applied OLAP, Inc., a software development company that caters exclusively to users of the industry-leading Hyperion Essbase announced that its ActiveOLAP for Essbase software product has been certified by Hyperion (Nasdaq: HYSL) as Essbase-Ready Gold.

Hyperion awards the Essbase-Ready Gold certification to desktop tools that deliver tight integration with specific features in Hyperion Essbase. Hyperion's gold certification program allows customers to leverage the performance, scalability and analytical power of Hyperion Essbase. As the market-leading OLAP technology, Hyperion Essbase is an open, multidimensional enterprise calculation engine used to deploy a wide range of business analysis applications in areas such as e-business analysis, customer relationship management analysis and supply chain analysis.

In order to earn Essbase-Ready Gold certification, tools must pass tight integration testing and be optimized for Hyperion Essbase features such as: use of the new attribute dimension; advanced server-based analytics; dynamic time series; and read/write capability.

"Hyperion is pleased to bestow the Essbase-Ready Gold certification on Applied OLAP's ActiveOLAP for Essbase, for the product's use of the full power and dynamic features in Hyperion Essbase," said Jeff Flores, director of alliance marketing for Hyperion. "Partners using Hyperion Essbase for innovative, specialist applications are key to the success of our extensive partner program. Applied OLAP and Hyperion deliver an advantage for customers by providing seamless integration between the ActiveOLAP front-end environment and the Hyperion Essbase, allowing end-users to take advantage of a powerful, thin-client analytical delivery solution."

"We are especially pleased at the broad range of companies implementing ActiveOLAP for Essbase", said Tim Tow, president and founder of Applied OLAP, Inc. "The familiar Excel-like interface means there is little or no training required to get users up and running. The product natively supports using Microsoft Excel for report design which means users may implement their business logic, including Excel formulas and formatting, and deploy the reports in a controlled, intranet environment. Further, because ActiveOLAP for Essbase is programmable, it can be used to implement functionalities that are impossible to implement in any other Essbase-aware tool."

Craig Wahlmeier, Technical Administrator - Database Systems, Data-Tronics Corp. FORT SMITH, Ark. said of their recent Hyperion Essbase/ActiveOLAP for Essbase implementation. "Our latest application, for ABF Freight System, Inc. (R), allows over 300 users unprecedented access to critical information needed to run their business. By a simple click of a button they can now drill from a cell in a Web-based ActiveOLAP for Essbase report to the detail level data in our data warehouse that makes up the dollar amount in the cell. Plus, the application will automatically display the images of the invoices that correspond to the data warehouse data. ActiveOLAP for Essbase was the only product we found that allows this easy to use Web-based link between Hyperion Essbase and relational data."

About Applied OLAP

Applied OLAP, Inc. was founded in 1998. The company's software and consulting is focused on the needs of Hyperion Essbase users. ActiveOLAP for Essbase has helped companies implement business analytical applications in various industries including banking, insurance, health care, communications, manufacturing, distribution, transportation and aerospace. For more information visit www.appliedolap.com.

Hyperion and Essbase are registered trademarks and Hyperion Solutions and Essbase-Ready are trademarks of Hyperion Solutions Corporation. All other trademarks and company names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.