Accenture Expands Relationship with STC to Address Exploding Customer Demand for eBusiness Integration Solutions

NEW YORK, March 28, 2000 - Accenture, a leading global management and technology consultancy, today announced that it is expanding its relationship with STC, a leading global provider of eBusiness integration (eBISM) packaged solutions. This alliance unites two leading players in the eBusiness market, and outlines a number of joint business development, education and co-development initiatives to help clients optimize their information infrastructures by leveraging eBI solutions.

With the recent proliferation of packaged applications such as supply chain management, customer relationship management, decision support, and eCommerce, along with the growth in corporate acquisition strategies, many companies are faced with highly disconnected IT infrastructures, impeding the seamless flow of information needed to enable true eBusiness. Accenture recognized the significance of this need for integration nearly two years ago, and has since maintained a relationship with STC, including an equity stake managed by Accenture Technology Ventures. Jackson L. Wilson, managing general partner of Accenture Technology Ventures, who was recently named to STC’s board of directors,notes "We recognized that STC’s proven product track record coupled with Accenture’s eBusiness integration capabilities would create a powerful force in helping companies create their future in the new economy."

Solidifying the commitment to this relationship, STC’s flagship product e*Gate™ Integrator, has been installed in Accenture’s global solution centers to enable both joint development and delivery of eBI solutions. STC’s eBusiness solutions have also been incorporated into Accenture’s eCommerce training curriculum, which is being conducted globally and is a required part of the firm’s eBusiness training curriculum.

"The eBusiness integration market space is projected to become bigger and last longer than the enterprise resource planning market, which Accenture led throughout the 1990s," said Christy Bass, Partner-Technology for Accenture’s Solutions Delivery Services line of business. "With the average large company running about 50 different systems-legacy, third-party and other applications - this market represents a truly incredible opportunity to advance our clients rapidly forward in this new eEconomy."

"With the escalating pressure on companies to become true eBusinesses, the industry-wide demand for eBI has never been greater," said Jim Demetriades, founder, chairman and CEO for STC. "The combination of Accenture’s leadership and expertise in delivering integrated solutions and STC’s technology strength, positions us to develop and deliver superior eBusiness solutions that will influence, and shape this rapidly evolving marketplace."

Together, Accenture and STC have worked with a number of organizations, including Dairy Farmers and Fairview Health Services. Australia’s largest dairy processor, Dairy Farmers, was able to integrate its ERP, third party and legacy systems to enable the route distribution, sales, purchasing, and processing of more than 1 billion liters of milk. In addition, Fairview Health Services, where critical clinical patient information is now more easily available to medical staff, was able to integrate more than 20 disparate systems, including medical records, microbiology and pharmacy across four hospitals in Minneapolis, and the medical center at the University of Minnesota.

"Dairy Farmers was facing a situation where a large number of complex and mission critical interfaces needed to be developed in a short period of time to coincide with the rollout of our new ERP systems," said Tony Talbot, Group Information Services Manager for Dairy Farmers. "We would not have been able to successfully deploy these interfaces without a robust interface architecture solution. Accenture and STC worked very effectively together, and the deployment went ahead without a hitch."

"Fairview needed to find a simple and practical way of achieving continuity between old and new systems in the face of a number of organizational changes," said Gary Strong, chief information officer for Fairview Health Services. "Accenture and STC provided an attractive approach that leveraged new technology to optimize our investments and immediately deliver business value to our organization."

About STC
STC is the leading global provider of eBusiness Integration (eBISM) solutions with its flagship product, e*Gate™ Integrator. e*Gate is the industry’s first open strategic eBusiness architecture that enables accelerated deployment of true eBusiness integration with unprecedented performance and reliability. Since shipping its first product in 1991, STC has successfully integrated more than 1,200 customers worldwide in a variety of industries. Just a few of STC’s customers include barnesandnoble.com, Citigroup, Fluor Corporation, Hewlett Packard, HypoVereinsbank, Maersk Sealand, PETsMART, Sony and Warner Lambert. Software partners include BroadVision, SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft.

STC is headquartered in Monrovia, Calif., with marketing and sales headquarters in Redwood Shores, Calif. For more information, please visit www.stc.com

e*Gate and e*Xchange are trademarks of Software Technologies Corporation. eBI is a servicemark of Software Technologies Corporation. All other trade names are the property of their respective owners.

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Jill E. Posnick

+1 (917) 452 4947

jill.e.posnick@accenture.com

Kristi Rawlinson

+1 (650) 622 2128

krawlinson@stc.com