Centra Software Unveils Centra 7.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

LEXINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 12, 2003

New Version of Centra's Award-winning Application Software

Addresses Emerging Corporate Requirement for an Enterprise-wide

Real-time Collaboration Standard

Centra Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTRA), a leading provider of application software and services for real-time enterprise collaboration (RTEC), today announced the launch of Centra 7(TM), the first application software to address the wide range of requirements for enterprise adoption of real-time collaboration solutions. Building on feedback from more than 1,000 customers, Centra 7 has been in development for over a year. The resulting innovations include:

-- Advanced Integration With the User Desktop: Seamless

integration with desktop applications, including instant

messaging, email and calendaring from Microsoft and IBM Lotus

software, for "instant meetings," dynamic and contextual

collaboration and increased ease of use.

-- Solutions That Address the Entire Business Process: Building

on an existing franchise in collaborative eLearning, Centra

7's new functionality will deliver enhanced integration with

departmental business processes, such as sales and marketing,

and virtual teamwork.

-- Architected for Global Enterprise Deployment: Advanced systems

architecture to support enterprise-class scalability,

security, performance and reliability as well as comprehensive

administration and reporting.

Centra 7 will be unveiled at Centra Summit 2003, Centra's worldwide user group conference held in Boston this week.

"While implementations of Web conferencing and virtual classroom tools have, to date, been pursued at a departmental level, concerns over total cost of ownership (TCO), security, and compliance needs become a strong argument for centralized collaboration strategies to avoid well-intentioned but inconsistent line-of-business decisions that increase long-term costs and risk factors," said Mike Gotta, senior vice president and principal analyst for META Group. "Decision makers should be investing in solutions that enable a common foundation of services around a manageable and secure operating environment that complements existing infrastructure and integrates with enterprise applications to facilitate internal and external collaboration around strategic business initiatives and organizational goals."

As tactical and ad hoc purchasing of real-time collaboration "tools" rapidly evolves toward more strategic investment in "applications" for the enterprise, a growing number of line-of-business executives and IT departments have selected Centra as the standard. With the launch of Centra 7, enterprise customers worldwide can benefit from new capabilities that take into consideration the needs of the entire organization. Centra 7 is the only real-time collaboration application today that can be deployed as both an on-premise and ASP solution. As a result, Centra customers can flexibly implement collaboration solutions for their specific requirements and business initiatives. In addition, Centra 7 takes an important step beyond Web conferencing by addressing the entire business process workflow. Unlike many existing point-products that focus on enabling online meetings, Centra 7 has functionality that integrates an entire business process: before, during and after the "live" collaboration session. Centra delivers a complete solution that seamlessly blends real-time collaboration into the context and flow of everyday work.

"Our use of Centra is tied to very strategic initiatives at Carlson Companies and is supported at the highest levels," said Kelly Leiker, learning technology manager for Carlson Companies, a global hospitality, marketing, and business and leisure travel company. "We can deliver information faster and more effectively to employees located across the nation. Without having to spend time and energy flying to physical meetings, 36,000 employees can be more productive in their jobs, and receive critical information and job skills where and when they need it. We look forward to deploying Centra 7 as we expand our Centra implementation."

Advanced Integration With the User Desktop

To support easy adoption by end users and facilitate faster, company-wide rollouts, Centra 7 delivers innovative support for both dynamic and contextual collaboration. Centra 7 users can dynamically join online sessions with "one click" from their desktop, Windows task bar, or from wherever the user is notified - an email, a calendar invitation, or an instant message alert - thanks to seamless integration with Microsoft and IBM Lotus calendaring, scheduling, email, and instant messaging applications.

As a result of integration between Centra 7 and the Microsoft Office suite, users can also launch a real-time collaboration session from within the context of their immediate work. Finally, Centra 7 also addresses important desktop configuration considerations, including an option for corporate environments with client lock-down policies as well as a new capability to download and play session recordings offline without client software installed.

Solutions That Address the Entire Business Process

To support deeper integration with operational processes and workflows, Centra 7 introduces a suite of software capabilities that blend business activities before, during and after sessions. These include features for administering participants, managing in-session content, and scheduling and recording sessions. Enhanced content management capabilities available through the Content Catalog, for example, enable users to access recorded collaboration sessions after the event for on-demand learning or corporate compliance reasons. For the marketing function, Centra 7 offers tools for self-service management of large-scale Web events to enable more efficient, end-to-end online event management and to reduce the need for additional third-party services for online event creation, marketing, reporting and registration.

For collaborative eLearning initiatives, deeper training personalization and more robust administration in the Centra Knowledge Center enhance content developers' ability to author and publish training collaboratively. Finally, to deliver easier and faster integration with other enterprise applications, like learning management systems (LMS) and customer relationship management (CRM) systems, Centra 7 supports Microsoft .NET Web services as the centerpiece of Centra's application integration capabilities.

Architected for Enterprise Deployment

To support the growing need for company-wide collaboration, Centra 7 delivers enterprise-class security, including sophisticated features for system and user account administration. The collaboration environments of hundreds of different business groups within the enterprise can be partitioned into independent, hierarchical domains, enabling efficient, controlled and secure system use. Centra 7 is also designed to meet increasing enterprise requirements for scalability, performance and reliability through an enhanced server architecture that supports load balancing, fail-over and recoverability.

"Centra 7 provides organizations with a comprehensive software solution that we believe offers a sustained and reliable business advantage," said Leon Navickas, Centra chairman and CEO. "Our products and services allow organizations to standardize on a real-time enterprise collaboration application that supports, adapts and improves business processes, while driving down the total cost of ownership for companies that are consolidating IT spending for real-time solutions on a single vendor platform."

Packaging and Availability

Centra 7 is scheduled for general worldwide availability in June 2003. Components of the application and add-on modules can be licensed separately or together as a complete enterprise collaboration environment that can be installed on-site or accessed through Centra's secure ASP. Pricing varies based on configuration. Call 1-800-414-3591 or 781-994-1168 for details.

About Centra

Centra offers enterprise applications software that enables organizations to shift their group-oriented business activities to the Internet or their internal network. Leading with an undisputed track record of helping more than 1,100 global corporations, government agencies and universities increase revenue and improve overall business performance, Centra offers a family of integrated real-time enterprise collaboration (RTEC) application software solutions and services to over 3.2 million licensed users. Customers drive greater productivity and lower their costs using Centra's solutions for collaborative eLearning, online sales and marketing, Web-based service and support, and other interactive, people-centric internal and customer-facing work. The applications can be deployed as on-premise software or through our ASP service, are available in 13 languages, and are supported by an active ecosystem of value-added partners, including Microsoft, Oracle, Siebel, Deloitte Consulting, EDS and Cisco. Today, organizations across every function, industry and market sector choose Centra, including Cadbury Schweppes, McKesson, Sysco, Viacom and Stanford University. Headquartered in Boston, Centra serves a worldwide customer base throughout the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia. For more information, visit www.centra.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

With the exception of the historical information contained in this release, the matters described herein may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including but not limited to, statements concerning management's expectations regarding future results of operations, and statements that involve risk and uncertainties that may individually or mutually impact the matters herein, and cause actual results, events and performance to differ materially. Without limiting the foregoing, the words "believes," "plans," "expects," "anticipates" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. There are a number of important risk factors that could cause our results to differ materially from those indicated by such forward-looking statements. These risk factors include, but are not limited to, technological difficulties, the results of future research, uncertainty of product demand and market acceptance for the Company's Centra 7 collaboration platform and its other current and future products, the effect of economic conditions, the impact of competitive products and pricing, technological difficulties and/or other factors outside the control of the Company, which are detailed from time to time in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2002 and other filings with the SEC, which are available at www.centra.com/investorrelations. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. The Company undertakes no obligation to release publicly the result of any revisions to these forward-looking statements that may be made to reflect events or circumstances after the date hereof or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events.

Centra is a registered trademark, and Centra 7 is a trademark of Centra Software, Inc. All other trademarks referenced herein are the property of their respective owners.