Cap Gemini America Leverages Best Practices From Year 2000 Services in Advanced Applications Management Offering.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 2, 1999--

Outsourcing Leader Will Help Bring Companies Through the Year 2000

as Part of Longer-Term Applications Management Relationship

Large Investments Made in Applications Management Service Centers

To Provide Centralized, Remote IT Management Services

Cap Gemini America today announced a strategy to combine its premium applications management expertise with best practices from its Year 2000 services to provide a portfolio of world-class applications services that can help companies through the Year 2000 date change and beyond.

Cap Gemini America is coupling its robust applications management capabilities with Year 2000 consulting services as part of a strategy to assist companies with their post-Year 2000 information technology priorities and support them through last-minute challenges resulting from the millennial date change. Cap Gemini America will provide legacy application support while simultaneously helping companies build and deploy best-of-breed systems.

Jim Woodward, senior vice president of Information Systems Management, has been tapped to manage Cap Gemini America's applications management and IT outsourcing services, building upon the processes and tools he contributed to the company's successful TransMillennium(R) service offering. Cap Gemini America's ARCdrive(R) toolset has helped more than 400 business across all major industries address Year 2000 issues on more than 4 billion lines of code.

"Cap Gemini America is responding to customer demand by investing heavily in applications management," said Woodward. "Companies want to ensure Year 2000 readiness, focus on core competencies and streamline IT resources in support of business objectives."

As a key component of its commitment to delivering the highest quality outsourcing services, the IT and management consulting leader is broadening its investments in best-of-class Applications Management Service Centers (AMSC). AMSCs in New York, the United Kingdom, Paris and Singapore, will serve as global hubs for seamless, remote IT outsourcing services for customized and off-the-shelf applications as well as the supporting infrastructure and network. Francois Labesse, the industry-recognized developer of the AMSC in France is replicating and enhancing the same techniques now at the New York facility.

Under Labesse's tutelage, Cap Gemini's six-year-old AMSC in Paris has grown rapidly and now serves fifty clients in various industry sectors and technology areas with a consultant base of 550 professionals. Cap Gemini is one of the world's largest providers of outsourcing services.

"The Cap Gemini model for applications management combines remote and shared delivery of services from a centralized, multi-customer facility using common processes, techniques, tools and resources," says Woodward. "Our approach leads the industry in the area of remote delivery of applications management services, and adds value to clients by coupling a centralized approach with on-site support when necessary."

Woodward is also leading the initiative to use the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute Capability Maturity Model(R) (CMM(R)) in addition to ISO 9000 as Cap Gemini America's software process framework for the development and maintenance of applications in the United States. Cap Gemini America has committed to provide CMM(R) level three or higher compliant services for its applications management engagements and to achieve level four compliance at its AMSC as soon as possible. The integration of CMM(R) into Cap Gemini's industry-leading ISO 9001 disciplines will help provide clients with improvements in software development, service delivery, speed, productivity and cost.

Cap Gemini America is the only applications management vendor in the United States that has been recertified for ISO 9001, since it committed to ISO 9001 processes in 1995. The addition of the CMM(R) model will make Cap Gemini America the only company to use both frameworks. The company has earned one of the best records of any IT services company in the United States for delivering projects on-time, on-budget and with high quality and excellent customer-rated satisfaction. As of July 1999, Cap Gemini America customers gave the company a satisfaction rating of 4.6 out of a possible 5.0 with 98.4% of year-to-date projects completed on time.

"Our success in Year 2000 services is being extended and replicated in applications management through a standard, integrated tool-set, automated processes, multi-skilled and cross-trained staff and industry-specific expertise from Cap Gemini America consultants," says Woodward.

Cap Gemini America, Inc. is an information technology (IT) and management consulting services leader with 4,500 employees at 35 locations in the United States and 1998 revenues of $623 million. Cap Gemini America offers full life-cycle services based on industry-specific expertise in the areas of applications management, enterprise resource planning, Enterprise EffectivenessSM, customer relationship management, Year 2000, and management consulting through its Gemini Consulting division. It is part of the $4.4 billion Cap Gemini Group--Europe's largest IT services and business consulting organization that was recently named European Company of the Year by the European Business Press Federation. Cap Gemini's 40,000 employees in 20 countries design and deliver strategic change through ideas, people, and technology. Visit Cap Gemini America on the Internet at www.usa.capgemini.com.