Categoric Enables The 'Do It Now' Culture With Real-time Wireless Voice Alerts & Escalated Event Management.

Business Editors/Hi-Tech Writers

LEATHERHEAD, U.K. & STERLING, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 28, 2002

Categoric Software, the leader in event management and alerting (EM&A) technology, today releases software that allows any existing business system to identify a problem, such as a delivery delay or stock shortage, and then automatically telephone customers asking them verbally to make an instant selection from a list of actions.

Call recipients can respond either by speaking or selecting responses through the keypad on their mobile phones. Thousands of such calls could be initiated and handled at the same time by a single computer rather than human staff.

"Xalerts 5.1 facilitates the 'Do It Now' culture by enabling machines to seek an immediate response rather than waiting for humans to notice that something is wrong," said Safi Captan, CTO and Founder of Categoric Software.

For many people voice would be the most natural interface, perhaps the only practical interface in some circumstances, to business systems. Xalerts 5.1 effectively allows any database or back-office system to talk to you wherever you are and offer you a straightforward, natural way to respond.

The personalized alerts delivered by Xalerts 5.1 are based on rules set either by the sender or the recipient. The supplier of a product could set up a rule so that in the event of a delay the system will automatically telephone the customer and verbally give them options to re-schedule, order an alternative product, cancel the order or speak to an operator.

Today Xalerts is mostly used in supply chain applications but most Enterprise Resource Planning and Customer Relationship Management vendors are also seeking to add such real-time multi-channel event management functionality to their products. Categoric Software provides them with a rapidly integrated way to do this.

"Adeptra is delighted to be working with Categoric to add voice alerting execution to its powerful event management and alerting software. In fact, this relationship allows both parties to extend the reach of their current offerings," said Phil Wilson, CEO of Categoric partner Adeptra. "Categoric alerts can now contact people in the most widely-supported way, by phone, and Adeptra can now offer an integrated state-of-the-art event management and personalization component to its solution."

Automatic escalation

In addition, advanced automated escalation features in Xalerts 5.1 ensure that any deviation from plan is not only detected but acted upon. With previous versions companies could define their business process norms or key performance indicators and ask Xalerts to notify whoever needed to know about any error or change.

In 5.1 not only can the system alert the person immediately responsible for a problematic event - by email, cell phone or any other channel - but if that person does not respond or take action within a specified time the system will automatically escalate the alert to the individual's colleague or manager.

This escalation can be to any communications device, anywhere, in a wide variety of requestable languages and can be set up as a process rather than just an alert, continuing to escalate until a problem is addressed or resolved.

Categoric provides Xalerts 5.1 as an embeddable engine which works with any database or back end system. It is an enterprise-strength infrastructure product built using industry-standard technologies that enable scalability and ease of integration such as Java, JMS-compliant queuing, XML data parsing and XSLT.

Captan continues: "Previously Xalerts enabled semi-automated management of exceptional events by watching company databases and triggering\emails or SMS messages to the people who need to act. By delivering automated spoken alerts and creating an instant response mechanism we have solved the problem that at any one time many of a company's employees or customers don't have immediate access to a computer and the majority of mobile phone users worldwide don't have, or don't know how to use, SMS. Pretty much anybody that a major business wants to sell to these days has a mobile phone. Interactive voice alerts puts them all immediately in reach whatever kind of phone, network or technical ability they have.

"The new voice features augment Categoric's commitment to the multi-channel approach," adds Captan. "Xalerts delivers the value of information anywhere in the extended enterprise, at any time, by any required medium. These channels now include: voice; email; mobile phone by SMS or WAP Push; fax; and pager. Xalerts 5.1 ensures that we remain the technology leaders in the event management market by a substantial margin."

Xalerts 5.1 runs on Windows and UNIX and is available immediately.

About Categoric Software Corp.

Categoric Software, the leader in event management and alerting technology (EM&A), empowers independent software vendors and enterprise solution providers to rapidly build, integrate and deploy real-time event-enabled business process solutions vital to compete in today's multi-channel, time sensitive world.

Categoric's enabling technology - open, personalized, interactive and mobile - harnesses the strength of the data contained in the extended enterprise and activates business processes to enhance speed, visibility, productivity, collaboration and customer service.

Founded in 1996, Categoric is privately held with investments from Nokia Ventures, T-Ventures (the investment arm of Deutsche Telekom), BancBoston Capital, and Alta Berkeley Ventures. Categoric is at work in over a hundred Global 2000 companies, and alliance partners include Logica, Sage, LIS, Misys/ACT, Armature, Artemis Project Management, Qiva, and Aldata.

The company maintains corporate headquarters in Leatherhead, United Kingdom and US headquarters in Sterling, Virginia with offices worldwide. www.categoric.com