Ultimus Wins Microsoft Office Solution Builder Program Award.

Business Editors

CARY, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 14, 2004

Ultimus Process Solution Packs Recognized in North America and

Asia Pacific Regions for Ability to Unlock the Power of

Microsoft Office System with BPM

Ultimus, the leading provider of complete business process management (BPM) and workflow automation solutions, today announced that Microsoft (MSFT) has recognized Ultimus with Solution Builder Program Awards in both the North American and Asia Pacific regions. Microsoft highlighted the Ultimus BPM Suite's strong capabilities to help organizations leverage Microsoft .NET technologies and the Microsoft Office System to reduce costs, improve customer satisfaction and trim workflow cycle times.

The awards highlight two solution packs, the Ultimus Process Solution Pack for Customer Support Management and the Ultimus Process Solution Pack for Purchasing Management. The Ultimus Process Solution Packs are designed for rapid out-of-the-box deployment of business process management solutions that effectively address challenges in areas such as internal help-desk operations, customer support, and finance and operational expenditures.

"We were impressed with Ultimus' ability to fully leverage Microsoft Office InfoPath, Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server, and the rest of the Office System within its Ultimus Solution Packs to ensure immediate ROI resulting from workflow efficiencies for our customers," said Robin Seiler BPSG Partner Solutions Manager at Microsoft. "The Ultimus Process Solutions for Purchasing Management and Customer Support address significant pain points for enterprise organizations with a solution that is both easy to deploy and easy to adapt to the unique challenges of our customers."

The Ultimus Process Solution Packs deliver ROI through process modeling, process development, human-centric workflow, and easy-to-use Web interfaces that allow business users to maintain ownership of the process, while automation speeds efficiency. The Ultimus Process Solution Packs for Customer Support Management and Purchasing Management:

- Are fully .NET compliant and leverage the existing Microsoft

infrastructure within organizations;

- Are fully customizable and can easily be expanded with the

capabilities of the complete Ultimus BPM suite;

- Support Web Services, enabling integration into other third

party systems;

- Support multiple languages so users can work in their native

language;

- Are entirely Web-based; and

- Require minimal staff training and have a low total cost of

ownership.

The Ultimus BPM suite is built on Microsoft .NET technologies and seamlessly integrates with Microsoft Office System components, such as MS-Word, Excel, and MS-Outlook. In addition, the Ultimus BPM Suite easily integrates with SharePoint Portal Server, BizTalk Server 2004, Content Management Server and Exchange, making the product a natural fit for organizations running in the Microsoft environment.

"We are excited to be recognized with the Microsoft Office Solution Builder Award," said Hank Barnes, vice president of marketing at Ultimus. "Built on the .Net architecture and easily integrated with other Microsoft applications, our solutions provide Microsoft-focused enterprises the business process management and workflow capabilities they need to improve customer support and reduce cycle times in purchasing departments."

About Ultimus

A pioneer in Business Process Management and workflow automation, Ultimus is a profitable, global software company that enables enterprises worldwide to increase their profits by modeling, automating, managing, and optimizing every business process. Ultimus has business operations and sales offices throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and South America. Through these offices and a network of more than 85 partners in 60 countries, more than 1000 customers, including Carnival Cruise Lines, Citizens Bank, McKessonHBOC, Microsoft, Newell Rubbermaid, Sony, and Siemens, have deployed the Ultimus Workflow Suite to address their business process management challenges. Ultimus and its partners use the Ultimus Workflow Development Methodology to standardize implementations, accelerate deployments, and enable continuous improvement.

Headquartered in Cary, NC, the company is a three-time recipient of the Technology Fast 500 Award from Deloitte & Touche and is listed among the Inc.500 for the second year. Additional information about Ultimus can be obtained by visiting the Ultimus Web site at http://www.ultimus.com, emailing [e-mail], or by calling 919-678-0900.

Ultimus is a trademark of Ultimus Inc. All other brands and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners and are used here for reference only