Versata Announces Versata 6 -- A Comprehensive Business Rules Platform for Agile Application Development.

OAKLAND, Calif. -- Versata Extends Platform to Include Business Rules for Decision Support, Process, Transaction and Data Logic

Versata, Inc. (Nasdaq:VATA), a leading independent provider of rapid application development platforms to automate and manage complex, data-intensive business applications, today announced Versata 6(TM), an integrated and comprehensive Business Rules Engine (BRE). Versata 6 significantly extends the capabilities of the Versata platform, and is one of the first BREs to include wide-ranging business rules for decision support, process, transaction, data logic, Web Services and Service Oriented Architectures (SOA). Versata 6 provides customers with the power and flexibility to use an inclusive BRE for their applications needs, and to deliver IT systems that can be quickly delivered and modified to suit changing business conditions and regulatory requirements.

"Versata 6 was developed specifically to address customers' needs for a comprehensive and flexible BRE solution that extends well beyond traditional decision support rules," commented Brett Adam, chief technology officer and vice president of engineering, Versata. "Initial response from customers has been very gratifying, and confirms our belief that enterprises will welcome the productivity gains and reduced ownership costs that come from using business rules throughout their application environments."

Versata 6 uses declarative business rules to create business logic and applications based on open standards using J2EE(TM), SOA and Eclipse. It was specifically designed to address the needs of Java developers. According to Versata customer, Jean Paul Andrieu, vice president, systems manager of Union Bank of California, "We have depended on Versata technology as our primary development platform for years. Through its support for process and decision rules, standards-based services, and Eclipse, we expect Versata 6 to take the product to the next level and further boost the productivity of our development team."

Significantly Extends Use of Rules

Using a BRE, companies can externalize their business decision support rules from the applications they govern, allowing rules to be created by business analysts and modified at run time by business end users. By contrast, using traditional tools, rules are hard-coded into applications themselves, making them difficult and expensive to modify. Versata 6 includes support for decision rules based on an implementation of the industry-standard Rete algorithm, providing high performance for complex, data-driven business applications such as sophisticated risk management, loan approvals and credit scoring.

Most BRE solutions only address decision support type rules, a small subset of the total business rules most applications require. Versata 6 supports compiled data and transaction rules as well as dynamic decision and process rules, giving customers the freedom to use business rules much more widely throughout their applications. Versata 6 builds on the proven productivity and cost savings that Versata has been delivering to the marketplace for years. Versata customers typically experience 3 to 5 times faster application development using declarative programming and business rules than with procedural programming. Applications built with Versata have seen dramatic reductions in the total cost of ownership (TCO) due to reduced maintenance costs derived from declarative programming and business rules.

According to Jim Sinur, vice president and distinguished analyst, Gartner Inc., "Rule technologies can help achieve the agility that businesses require today, because rules are easy to change, accessible and responsive. There are at least a dozen business areas where rules can deliver benefits."(1)

Built on an Open Architecture

Versata 6 uses an open architecture and supports SOA and Web Services. Built to J2EE architectural standards, Versata 6 uses a model-driven approach using declarative programming and business rules to create Java applications with built-in support for SOA and Web Services. Applications developed with Versata 6 can expose transactions and services as standard web services, or as stateless session beans, and can optionally use the built-in Service Data Objects (JSR235) support. This broad support for SOA continues Versata's tradition of creating high-performance, scalable, N-tier J2EE applications.

According to Joseph Hu, president of Versata partner, RuleMeister, "The support in Versata 6 for SOA and the capability to expose transactions as web services will be a great time saver for developers. Integrating process with transaction rules will significantly increase our productivity. The addition of decision rules in Versata 6 will enable us to address an entire new class of enterprise applications."

Optimized for Developers' Needs

The Versata 6 Workbench, the integrated development environment for Versata 6, is built on the Eclipse platform. The Versata 6 Workbench supports the design, deployment, and debugging of data and transaction logic, process, decision rules and services. It fully exploits the metadata modeling of Eclipse by using the Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF). EMF is compliant with the Object Management Group's XML Metadata Interchange specification, making it simple to integrate Versata 6 design information and metadata with other Eclipse-based tools and corporate metadata. Versata 6 Workbench provides a complete set of complimentary Java development tools, including Java code editors, debuggers, background compilers and integration with source code control systems.

According to Versata partner, Jeff DeLong, Principal at Varasi, Inc., "Versata 6 provides new opportunities for Eclipse users to create business rules in a familiar environment. Now developers can create powerful business logic without having to write a lot of Java code and access the resulting objects from other Eclipse-based tools. This will provide a big benefit for my team in reducing our development time and increasing productivity."

"Versata 6 promises significant advances, both through standards compliance in the areas of IDE (Eclipse), metadata, service-based interfaces, and deployment. More importantly, it offers better and more novel abstractions: including process rules, decision tables, and service classes," said Gary Furash, development manager, Maricopa County Attorney's Office. He continued, "Versata has helped us to realize the promise of business rules. It has allowed a very small, focused development team to develop a very complex, N-tier, robust, scalable J2EE application without extensive J2EE knowledge."

"We are excited about the value that Versata 6 brings to our customers and partners," noted Linda Giampa, vice president for worldwide operations, Versata. "We have competitively priced Versata 6, making it possible for customers to use it for most of their business rules' needs and to obtain a suite of capabilities for the price they would normally expect to pay for an individual module."

Versata 6 is in beta test this week and will be generally available later this month. Initial platform support for Versata 6 is provided for IBM WebSphere(R), BEA WebLogic Server(R) and JBoss application server as well as IBM DB2(R), Oracle, Sybase, MySQL(R), and Microsoft SQL Server(R) databases.

Webcast on Business Rules

On April 7, at 1:00 pm (EST), Versata will be hosting a webcast, "Business Rules Technologies: Keys to a More Agile Enterprise." Jim Sinur, Gartner vp and distinguished analyst, will describe how recent BRE advances can improve businesses agility and reduce the costs of application ownership. To register, visit http://placeware.viewcentral.com/reg/Versata/040705a.

This press release contains forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Forward-looking statements in this press release include, but are not limited to, statements regarding Versata's expectations, beliefs, hopes, intentions or strategies regarding the Versata 6(TM); the benefits derived from the use of the product; the specific functionality of the product; date of general availability for such product and the time and date of the Versata webcast on Business Rules. These statements involve risks and uncertainties that may cause our actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements; including lack of market acceptance for Versata 6(TM); the risk that users will not perceive material benefits from the product; the product may fail to deliver the expected benefits described herein; the possibility of errors or defects in our product; the date of general availability may be delayed due to unforeseen reasons; and date and/or time for the webcast changing due to unforeseen factors and other risk factors that are discussed in our reports and registration statements filed from time to time with the SEC. All forward looking statements included in this press release are based upon information available to us as of the date hereof, and we do not assume any obligation to update such statements or the reasons why actual results could differ materially from those projected in such statements.

Versata is a registered trademark of Versata, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks herein are property of their respective owners.

(1)Source: Research Note, "Taking Rule Technologies for a Test Drive", Jim Sinur, December 15, 2004.