Dell Marketplace Brings Suppliers, Buyers Together in Established B2B e-Commerce Community.

Business Editors & High-Tech Writers

ROUND ROCK, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 20, 2000

Dell (Nasdaq:DELL), a world leader in Internet commerce and infrastructure technology, today extended its reach into the emerging business-to-business electronic commerce (B2B e-commerce) market by announcing the Dell Marketplace, which will bring together many of Dell's U.S. business customers as suppliers and buyers in a dynamic B2B e-commerce community.

Through the Dell Marketplace, suppliers and buyers can leverage Dell's e-commerce expertise along with its relationships with strategic Internet infrastructure partners to access goods and services from a wide range of companies, the majority of which are Dell customers. Based on the Ariba B2B Commerce Platform and Microsoft(R) Windows(R) 2000 technology, the Dell Marketplace is designed to provide overall lower costs to buyers through streamlined purchasing processes and electronic procurement, while suppliers will gain a cost-effective means of reaching established and new customers.

Potential suppliers and buyers can learn more about the Dell Marketplace by going to www.dellmarketplace.com. The Dell Marketplace is scheduled to open for business in October.

"More and more of our customers are turning to the Internet as a primary channel to purchase the goods and services needed to conduct their businesses," said Joe Marengi, senior vice president and general manager, Dell Relationship Group. "The Dell Marketplace extends value to our customers by providing access to a dynamic e-commerce community through powerful, reliable and affordable open-standard technologies such as Dell servers and storage."

Forrester Research predicts that online business trade will reach $2.7 trillion in 2004, of which 53 percent will flow through e-marketplaces, a 200-percent compound growth rate per year over the next four years.

Unlike some e-marketplaces that focus on e-procurement in specific vertical markets, the Dell Marketplace will reach horizontally across multiple product segments to provide buyers access to items from a variety of suppliers.

"Powered by the Ariba Marketplace Network Edition solution, the Dell Marketplace is further testament of the success of our multi-faceted alliance with Dell and Ariba's commitment to rapid customer deployment," said John Magner, vice president, North American operations for Ariba. "This marketplace represents a new business opportunity for Dell, while allowing its suppliers and customers to take advantage of leading B2B e-commerce solutions to quickly realize commerce process efficiencies."

Lante, a leading e-marketplace consulting company, helped Dell translate its best practices into an e-marketplace that leverages its e-commerce experience and one-on-one customer relationships.

"Lante is committed to helping Dell extend its leadership as one of the digital economy's most innovative and successful companies," said Rudy Puryear, president and CEO of Lante. "The Dell Marketplace exemplifies the type of far-sighted, customer-focused strategy that will be the hallmark of profitable Internet-based commerce in the years ahead. We are pleased to work with Dell on this project as a key part of our ongoing relationship with them."

Buyer and Supplier Benefits

By participating in the Dell Marketplace, buyers can benefit by networking with thousands of other customers to leverage the increased economies of scale provided by the Internet. The dynamic capabilities of a horizontal marketplace typically allow buyers the ability to purchase goods more easily and affordably, and faster than traditional storefront purchasing.

Suppliers can tap into the thousands of small- and medium-business customers that do business with Dell. Perhaps the greatest benefit to suppliers is the efficiency and cost reduction gained along the supply chain cycle. Suppliers can also post their product catalogs to the Dell Marketplace, opening their inventory to a completely new set of buyers through Dell's extensive customer base and other supplier traffic. 3M, Pitney Bowes Inc. and Motorola are among the early suppliers that plan to sell and/or market their products through the Dell Marketplace.

"We believe the Dell Marketplace can play a critical role as distribution through e-commerce channels continues to evolve," said Paul Mullaney, eBusiness manager, 3M. "Because of the collaborative selling environment in Dell's Marketplace, we are empowered to take a more proactive role marketing our products to end users on behalf of Dell's corporate outbound sales distribution."

"Pitney Bowes is excited to be part of this dynamic B2B Marketplace which will enhance the distribution and reach of our PitneyWorks suite of products and services into the rapidly growing Internet-enabled small business market," said Elise DeBois, president of PitneyWorks.com, Pitney Bowes.

Exterprise Inc., a leading provider of collaboration platform software for e-marketplaces, provided its ActiveMarket platform to bring "value-added services" capabilities to the Dell Marketplace, allowing Dell and its suppliers to build deeper relationships with customers. 3M's Office Ergonomics products will be the first to use ActiveMarket in the virtual showroom.

"We are excited by the fact that Dell has embraced our technology and vision in creating value-based marketplaces," said Manoj Saxena, president and CEO of Exterprise. "ActiveMarket provides value-added customer- and partner-facing services such as product or solution showrooms, campaigns and business intelligence that sustains relationships over time."

Suppliers can gain access to the Dell Marketplace through a powerful supplier integration solution, which includes Dell hardware, Microsoft software and Lante services.

"One of the biggest challenges facing enterprises today is getting past the one-off integration battle necessary to deliver on the promise of business-to-business e-commerce," said Paul Flessner, senior vice president of .NET Enterprise Server Development, Microsoft Corp. "The Dell Marketplace is a prime example of enterprise-class e-businesses taking advantage of the Microsoft platform to get beyond this challenge and allow Dell to extend its e-business leadership across an even broader channel of trading partners."

Dell will also be among the first suppliers to sell its products on the Dell Marketplace, enabling buyers to procure both Dell's and other companies' products from a common buying interface. In addition, Dell will sell computer peripheral products available through its corporate outbound sales distribution, such as computer accessories, printers, scanners and networking devices. DellHost, Dell's Web-hosting service, will host the Dell Marketplace.

About Dell

Dell Computer Corporation (Nasdaq:DELL) is the world's leading direct computer systems company, based on revenues of $28.5 billion for the past four quarters, and is a premier provider of products and services required for customers to build their Internet infrastructures. The company ranks No. 56 on the Fortune 500, No. 154 on the Fortune Global 500 and No. 3 on the Fortune "most admired" lists of companies. Dell designs, manufactures and customizes products and services to customer requirements, and offers an extensive selection of software and peripherals. Information on Dell and its products can be obtained on the World Wide Web at www.dell.com.

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