ArsDigita Enables Away.com to Provide Extraordinary Travel Opportunities.

Business/Technology Editors

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 21, 2000

Using the ArsDigita Community System (ACS) collaborative commerce

application suite, Away.com helps savvy travelers find and purchase

unique vacations

ArsDigita Corporation, the worldwide leader in software solutions for collaborative commerce, announces that the ArsDigita Community System (ACS) suite of collaborative commerce applications powers the leading adventure travel services provider on the Web, Away.com. Away.com brings together world travelers, experts, and tour operators to create a vibrant online community where users can search for escapes, use personalized travel planners, get advice and buy gear for the trip. With over 1,000,000 members, the site has been ranked the #1 Outdoors site by PC Data Online and hosts the largest network of tour operators and trips on the Web.

"We chose to work with ArsDigita because of the breadth of their applications and because the ACS doesn't require us to implement numerous point solutions," said Sean Greene, CEO, Away.com. "ArsDigita focuses their applications on creating communities, which is very important to generate loyalty amongst our users. They were also able to help us get up and running faster than we ever anticipated."

Key applications from the ACS used by Away.com include:

-- Discussion forums: users can post to public bulletin boards,

create private discussion groups, attach photos to postings

and do keyword searches of all postings.

-- E-commerce: a comprehensive e-commerce module, offering all

the fine-control product inventory, shopping cart and

transaction processing support you'd expect in any e-commerce

system, plus several other useful features including robust

customer service support (call center support submodule),

security, user tracking, gift certificates and special offers,

order fulfillment and tracking, auditing and online reporting.

-- Personalization: several applications that enable a unique

user experience for each site member. Includes Portals,

Content Categorization, User Registration and Administration.

-- Neighbor-to-neighbor recommendation service: a repository of

user experience with various kinds of merchants; similar to

discussion forums, except that messages are sorted by

merchants and the system knows that people are referring to

transactions.

-- Customer relationship management: tracking customer

relationships over time through various "states" (defined by

user behavior on the site that is automatically tracked and

analyzed) such as "new user" to "great customer" to "slipping

customer. "These states can then be used to target actions at

particular classes of users.

-- Content management: ACS Publishing applications allow the

administrator to create and manage different content sections

of the site. This module supports four different types of

content sections: admin (administration pages), system (news,

discussion forum, etc.), custom (url directories) and static

(html pages).

The ACS is an open-source suite of fully integrated enterprise applications for supporting collaborative commerce. Collaborative commerce defines the interactions among and within organizations involved in buying, selling or exchanging goods, services and information. (for an ArsDigita white paper on collaborative commerce, see http://www.arsdigita.com/pages/x2x.adp) The ACS consists of software addressing eight core requirements enabling collaboration and commerce: marketing, publishing, transaction management, customer service, personalization, analysis, unstructured collaboration and administration. Based on a common data model, the ACS provides fully integrated applications that enable customers to develop Web services more rapidly and with less cost than integrating traditional packaged applications.

About Away.com (http://www.away.com)

Away.com brings together world travelers, experts, and tour operators to create a vibrant online community where users can search for and book trips, use personalized travel planners, get advice and buy gear. The site is ranked the number one Outdoors site by PC Data Online and hosts the largest network of tour operators and trips on the Web. Investors, such as Gannett Co., Inc., of Arlington, Va., Chicago-based New World Ventures and Potomac Ventures of Washington, D.C., back the privately held firm. Away.com maintains its travel services division and call center in Portland, Maine, which is staffed with expert travel consultants to answer questions and provide advice to its 1,000,000 members.

About ArsDigita

ArsDigita Corporation is the worldwide leader in software solutions for collaborative commerce. Some of the world's largest organizations rely on the ArsDigita Community System (ACS), the company's open-source, freely distributed suite of applications, to drive their online success. Web sites and technologies incorporating the company's software include Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HWP), Siemens, America Online (NYSE: AOL), Oracle Corporation (Nasdaq; ORCL), Away.com and Environmental Defense. Backed by General Atlantic, Greylock, Trident Partners and Bain & Company, ArsDigita has grown to seven offices in the United States, Europe and the Far East. For more information visit http://arsdigita.com.