AspenTech Announces Enhanced Regional Planning Solution for Petroleum Companies.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 2, 2004

Solution enables companies to optimize global or regional supply

chains, including multiple plants and supply/distribution networks

Aspen Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: AZPN) today announced a significant enhancement to its Regional Planning solution for the petroleum industry. The solution now enables petroleum companies to optimize the performance of global or regional networks of plants by performing economic planning across multiple sites. The addition of these new capabilities to AspenTech's Regional Planning solution - which also includes demand management, feedstock planning, and distribution planning and optimization capabilities - will help petroleum companies to maximize plant utilization, respond more quickly to market opportunities, and make better informed day-to-day operating decisions.

The enhanced planning capabilities are provided by Aspen PIMS Enterprise Edition(TM) (Aspen PIMS EE), a new product that is designed to complement Aspen PIMS(TM), AspenTech's industry-leading economic planning tool. Aspen PIMS is currently used by many of the world's largest refineries and petrochemical plants, and employs both linear and non-linear programming techniques to generate the most profitable operating plans. It helps companies select optimal feedstock and product slates, optimize product blending, set operating targets for their facilities, manage inventories, and analyze capital investment strategies.

Aspen PIMS EE provides a new set of technologies and features that allows Aspen PIMS to be used in a broader range of enterprise planning applications, enabling companies to optimize the supply chain for multiple facilities and supply/distribution networks using a common set of models, data and assumptions. These capabilities ensure that companies adopt plans and make commercial, inventory and exchange decisions that are optimized for the entire enterprise, rather than for the local requirements of individual business units or facilities.

"Recent industry consolidation means that refining and petrochemical companies are now looking for ways to optimize complex regional plant networks," said Steve Pringle, Sr. Vice President of AspenTech's Manufacturing/Supply Chain Business Unit. "The introduction of Aspen PIMS EE will enable organizations to realize significant business value by adopting a new approach to supply chain planning that allows multiple plants to be optimized using a secure set of common models. The new product is simple to implement and use, and enables companies to make improved planning decisions that could translate into tens of millions of dollars of savings per year."

To support the necessary enterprise capabilities, Aspen PIMS EE uses a new architecture that has been developed using Microsoft's .NET technology. The product runs on enterprise relational database systems - including Oracle and Microsoft's SQL Server - to ensure that large volumes of data and complex models can be efficiently managed and integrated. The role-based security features of Aspen PIMS EE allow multiple users to access the central set of optimization models to perform different planning studies and to create individual case files, ensuring that any changes to models are maintained separately from the base model. This approach leads to better data management across the organization and ensures that the latest versions of the models are consistently applied.

Multi-user access is provided via role-based consoles, which can be configured to allow non-experts to use the application quickly and securely with minimal training. To facilitate integration with enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and other plant and business applications, Aspen PIMS EE is designed to be used in combination with the integration infrastructure capabilities of Aspen Operations Manager(TM). This integration platform enables companies to support their business processes using industry standard integration software and a secure technology infrastructure that supports open standards and integration with third-party data and applications.

About AspenTech

Aspen Technology, Inc. provides industry-leading software and implementation services that enable process companies to increase efficiency and profitability. AspenTech's engineering product line is used to design and improve plants and processes, maximizing returns throughout an asset's operating life. Its manufacturing/supply chain product line allows companies to increase margins in their plants and supply chains, by managing customer demand, optimizing production, and streamlining the delivery of finished products. These two offerings are combined to create solutions for enterprise operations management (EOM), integrated enterprise-wide systems that provide process manufacturers with the capability to dramatically improve their operating performance. Over 1,500 leading companies already rely on AspenTech's software, including Aventis, Bayer, BASF, BP, ChevronTexaco, Dow Chemical, DuPont, ExxonMobil, Fluor, GlaxoSmithKline, Shell, and Total. For more information, visit www.aspentech.com .

AspenTech, Aspen PIMS Enterprise Edition, Aspen PIMS, Aspen Operations Manager and the aspen leaf logo are trademarks of Aspen Technology, Inc., Cambridge, Mass.