Asera Launches eBusiness Operating System 5.0 for Real-Time Cross-Enterprise eBusiness and Collaboration.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

BELMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 29, 2001

Asera Delivers Standards-Based Web Services 

for Back-End Systems, Including SAP and Oracle

Asera, Inc. today announced the release of the Asera eBusiness Operating System(TM) 5.0, based on XML (Extensible Markup Language) and J2EE (Java(TM) 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition) standards. The latest release provides the industry's first unified framework that enables customers to model both process logic and user interactions in large, collaborative environments. Additionally, with 5.0, enterprises can now leverage Asera to compose and publish Web services from any legacy or packaged software, including SAP (SAPG.DE) and Oracle (Nasdaq:ORCL).

The latest release is also compliant with important Web services standards including SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol), WSDL (Web Services Definition Language), and UDDI (Universal Discovery, Description, and Integration Protocol).

"We are extremely pleased with the expanded value that the Asera eBusiness Operating System 5.0 will deliver to large enterprises in this highly competitive global market," said David Murphy, president and chief executive officer of Asera. "Our customers are forerunners in the market trend toward leveraging their extended enterprise for gaining competitive advantage. Asera customers are taking the lead in cross-enterprise eBusiness and collaboration."

Web Services

With Asera 5.0, legacy and packaged software like SAP and Oracle become a built-in part of the enterprise APIs that Asera can tie to business processes and deploy as composite applications. The result is a completely integrated eBusiness solution that runs as seamlessly as a packaged application, but leverages heterogeneous applications and data sources from within the enterprise.

Asera focuses on a configurable business process and incorporates the critical services necessary to integrate applications and deliver complex, secure solutions tailored to the user's environment. The result is an array of fully standards-compliant Web services that shield cross-enterprise users from the intricacies and expense of accessing back end systems with a multitude of commands and languages.

Event-Driven Workflow

The Asera eBusiness Operating System 5.0 provides cross enterprise process modeling from a single interface. With 5.0, customers can build and deploy presentation processes for Web flow, private processes for inter-enterprise business logic, and public processes for cross-enterprise collaboration. While earlier versions of the Asera solution have enabled the creation of cross-enterprise processes that leverage past IT investments in data-to-data level software integration, the latest release additionally provides Asera customers the unique ability to model all enterprise business processes including logic, security and presentation.

"The Asera solution has the flexibility to allow our customers to either leverage their exiting B2Bi technology investments, or build and deploy new composite applications using the Asera platform to natively model all private and public collaborative business processes," said Anil Nori, chief technology officer of Asera.

Rules-Based Personalization

Through Asera 5.0, business and functional analysts now can use a Web-based interface to customize and personalize end-user portals. The rules-based personalization engine extends Asera's personalization capabilities and enables enterprises to pre-define personalization rules based on the users' attributes and the context of the interaction.

Market leaders are leveraging personalization as a competitive differentiator to provide their customers with a more natural and intuitive experience based on their profile, native language, level of entitlement, and location.

"Asera customers have seen significant speed-to-market benefits, reduced development and maintenance costs and improved production quality and cycle times," said Johnny Kessel, founder and senior vice president, EveryMethod Systems. "Asera's method of managing complex processes significantly improves productivity over time, while driving down costs."

The Asera eBusiness Operating System, which includes the Asera Platform and the Asera Development Workbench, makes possible the rapid and efficient development of custom business processes created dynamically from new applications and from the packaged legacy software applications resident in Global 2000 enterprises. The Asera Development Workbench enables developers, enterprises and other licensees to develop new applications that can be integrated with existing software in new ways that are defined by the business process of the organization.

About Asera, Inc.

Asera provides Global 2000 and emerging-growth companies with an eBusiness Operating System that includes a patent-pending software platform and applications development environment. The Asera eBusiness Operating System allows companies to customize best-in-class software applications, implement their business processes rapidly, and remain insulated from the cost and complexity of technology change. Asera's eBusiness Operating System is a critical enabling technology for the emerging real-time enterprise. Based in Silicon Valley, Asera also has offices in the UK, Germany and India. Asera can be found on the Web at http://www.asera.com.

Johnny Kessel is a founder and senior vice president at EveryMethod Systems. Founded in 1998, EveryMethod Systems provides advisory services, research publications, software development and consulting in the areas of information technology and e-Business software engineering. (http://www.everymethod.com)

Note to Editors: Asera and Asera eBusiness Operating System are trademarks of Asera Inc. Java and all Java-based marks are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries. Asera, Inc. is independent of Sun Microsystems, Inc. All other products and names may be trademarks of their respective companies.