Contact:
Scott Cook
Lotus Software
IBM Software Group
617-693-3008
kenneth_cook@us.ibm.com

IBM PartnerWorld Business Partners Specializing in Lotus Software Achieve Marks of Distinction for Ground-breaking Services, Products and Technologies ORLANDO, Fla., January 27, 2003 -- Reinforcing its commitment to industry leadership and innovation, IBM Corporation today announced the winners of the 2003 Lotus Beacon Awards. Judged by a team of leading industry journalists and analysts, this year's Beacon Awards recognize IBM PartnerWorld Business Partners who have excelled at providing quality products, innovative solutions and superior services to customers based on Lotus software technologies.

IBM Lotus software honored 17 winners in 13 categories reflecting the rapidly growing portfolio of solutions and services provided by IBM PartnerWorld Business Partners. Winners were honored during the Beacon Awards ceremony yesterday as part of Lotusphere 2003, Lotus software's ninth annual partner, developer and user conference. The Best in Showcase Award will be announced at the Showcase Reception this evening.

"Our Business Partners continue to meet the business needs of customers by leveraging Lotus' collaborative technology to provide businesses with a competitive edge necessary for success in today's economy. This year's Beacon Award showcase continues the tradition of honoring Business Partners that have excelled in delivering technologies and services that directly and significantly improve business processes," said Frances West, director of channels and alliances, Business Development, Lotus Software, IBM Software Group. "Additionally, this year we've added new Beacon Award categories, including the Best Portal Solution, which reflects the evolution of collaboration and the advances and developments in workplace technologies that leverage Lotus and WebSphere to create a Dynamic Workplace."

Categories and Winners The categories and winners of the Lotus Beacon Awards include:

Distinction Awards
Distinguished Achievement -- Honors the top IBM Business Partners from each region of the world. Winners demonstrate excellence in driving revenue, innovation, loyalty, ability to open new markets and stature in the Business Partner community. (Judges: In region, IBM Business Partner Sales and Channel Managers)

Winners: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) (New Delhi, India) is one of IBM's oldest partners, having significantly contributed to Lotus' entrée into competitive accounts in India. Their vertical business practices for Banking, Manufacturing, Insurance, Telecom, and Government have recommended Lotus products for Workflow automation, Document Management and Knowledge Management requirements for customers both in India and globally.

InfoSys (Swindon, United Kingdom) has surpassed expectations with IBM License sales in the United Kingdom, generating well over USD$2 million of business. Infosys has already implemented a number of successful Lotus Domino 6 projects. As they continue to drive IBM and Lotus technology in the UK, Infosys has implemented three very large Lotus Domino based development projects in the Pharmaceutical sector.

Jonima (Mexico City, Mexico), a market leader in customer support and application tuning, was the chief contributor to the Lotus brand in Latin America during 2002. The firm currently holds 22 Lotus Certifications demonstrating loyalty, investment and commitment to Lotus technologies. Jonima is well positioned in the market with its three main Lotus applications: ISO CONTROL (for ISO 9000 control), Norma Control (document workflow) and Viajes Control (travel authorization management and expense controls).

With a year to date mid-market revenue of $750,000, Computech (De Pere, Wisconsin) is a partner that embraces nearly the entire Lotus product line and is often one of the first to approach their customers with new Lotus technologies. Computech actively markets the entire line of Lotus products into the SMB marketplace through seminars, customer success stories and by sponsoring two successful Lotus user groups.

Rising Star -- This award honors the IBM Business Partner who is breaking new ground in solutions, business model, channel strategy or attainment of market share and/or revenue. (Industry judges: Laura Ramos, Giga, and Mark Jones, InfoWorld)

Winner: Instant Technologies (Beverly, MA) broke new ground to capitalize on the competitive Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Office customer base which lacks integrated e-mail, chat, presence and application sharing in a secure environment. Instant Team Messenger for Microsoft Outlook integrates the capabilities of Lotus Sametime and Microsoft Office, providing a huge revenue opportunity for IBM and their partners worldwide.

Solution Awards Best Knowledge Discovery Solution -- Rewards the solution that assists organizations in the discovery and application of knowledge to drive business value by applying capabilities that capture, organize, locate and disseminate knowledge. (Industry judges: Mike Gotta, Meta Group, and Hugh McKeller, KM World)

Winner: The On-line Documentation Library and Integrated Collaboration Solution developed by EKM Corporation (Encinitas, CA) delivers a knowledge management solution comprised of Lotus Domino.Doc, QuickPlace and Sametime. The solution manages tactical information under document life cycle control via secure Internet access and is complemented by real-time collaborative services. The solution enabled EKM's customer to protect, access and reuse its knowledge assets in an environment where personnel movement is highly dynamic. As a result, the customer is able to rapidly respond to changing requirements and has realized a 70% reduction in paper consumption, a 30% reduction in copying costs, reduced travel expenses and increased productivity.

Best Learning Solution -- Honors the year's most notable online learning solution built using IBM Lotus LearningSpace. The solution demonstrates effective transfer of skills and measurable return on investment. (Industry judges: Jennifer Vollmer, Meta Group, and Ryann Ellis, Learning Circuits)

Winner: Safmarine Computer Services (SCS) (Cape Town, South Africa) recently rolled out 3300 Lotus LearningSpace licenses to a leading airline to assist with the training of flight operations staff. The customer selected SCS for its total end-to-end solution based on award-winning Lotus LearningSpace. SCS provided assessment functionality required by the airline, an initial proof of concept, planning, design, content development, technology, implementation and delivery. Using SCS's solution, the customer was able to train all their 3300 staff within four weeks. Staff were able to access the training when and where they wanted, and administrators were easily able to track who had done what training with what level of mastery.

Best Collaborative Solution -- Recognizes the best online collaborative solution for an organization's intranet, extranet or Internet. This business application leverages Lotus software's collaborative technologies to enhance communication, efficiency and organizational effectiveness. (Industry judges: David Marshak, Patricia Seybold Group, and Steve Gillmor, InfoWorld)

Winner: RxDDS from Titan Solutions Group, Inc. (Austin, TX) provides general dental practitioners and specialists an affordable dental practice software application leverages Lotus Domino integrated with Lotus Sametime to facilitate practice workflow and creates a standard platform for doctor-to-doctor and doctor-to-patient communication and collaboration. At its core is image records management, the base unit of communication within today's dental profession. Around this centerpiece, RxDDS has built tools for collaborative planning among all members of a dental team to enhance the overall quality of care.

Best Mobile/Wireless Solution -- Honors a mobile or wireless solution that provides key information to field and mobile workforce employees or end-users using Lotus technologies, keeping them up to date and in the know, significantly improving customer productivity. (Industry judge: Christa Coleman, Mobile Business Advisor)

Winner: The BrookstoneWirelessVirtualOfficeTM from Brookstone Technologies Pty Limited (Double Bay, New South Wales, Australia) is a fully featured eOffice system, which delivers comprehensive eCollaborative office functionality centrally and remotely, with workflow-enabled wireless connectivity using Lotus Domino Everyplace. The wireless functionality includes operation via GPRS and extends the eOffice to deliver time-critical information in real time and to provide robust workflow and transaction capability remotely via wireless-enabled PDAs. To date the BrookstoneWirelessVirtualOfficeTM has been embraced for its wireless-enabled eOffice functionality in the Equities Market (Risk Management) and the Horseracing/Betting Industry.

Best Portal Solution -- Recognizes a solution that leverages Lotus collaborative components within IBM WebSphere Portal Family to create a Dynamic Workplace for either employees, customers and/or suppliers via an intranet or extranet. This portal solution leverages these collaborative technologies to deliver the best solution to a business problem. (Industry judge: Sharon Gaudin, internet.com)

Winner: Cordial (Seoul, Korea) has developed and launched a comprehensive enterprise workspace portal solution. The solution, eGate-TEPS, is built on IBM WebSphere Portal Extend and is integrated tightly with Lotus Domino Release 5 applications and with Lotus Sametime, Domino.Doc and QuickPlace to provide one-click access to enterprise-wide information including direct connection to back-end systems. Primarily targeted at manufacturing and financial companies, eGate-TEPS provides real-time data access to manufacturing and financial management systems, and allows employees to customize their workspace to make faster decisions by removing communication bottlenecks within the enterprise.

Best Industry Solution -- Recognizes an outstanding solution tailored for the specific business challenges of the commercial or public sectors. (Industry judge: John Dix, Network World)

Winner: Leveraging the advanced features of Lotus Notes and Domino 6, the InterTrac solution from ComputerWorks (Albany, New York) provides Web-enabled automated solutions to prominent federal and state offices. In one government implementation the InterTrac solution is used by a staff of 2,000 employees across 11 regional offices to radically improve the delivery of services to over 1,600 local municipalities and 10,000 jurisdictional agencies statewide. The immediate benefits have included the elimination of hundreds of thousands of dollars in postage and document handling costs and a 20-60% improvement in the speed of response to local citizens and state officers.

Best Messaging Migration Solution -- Honors the most notable solution that achieves migration from a non-Lotus software messaging system to IBM Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino or IBM Lotus iNotes. (Industry judges: Sara Radicati, The Radicati Group, and Elizabeth Olsen, Lotus Advisor)

Winner: Advanced Development Group (Unionville, Pennsylvania) designed a repeatable methodology and tools to help a large multi-national company quickly absorb new acquisitions into their single messaging environment. Over 6,000 users have been migrated to Lotus Domino on IBM eServer iSeries and Lotus Quickplace, with training provided through Lotus LearningSpace. In addition to rapid migrations, the customer saved over USD$250,000 in its first year and over USD$320,000 in its second year in deployment and administration expenses.

Best Philanthropic Solution -- Recognizes the IBM PartnerWorld Business Partner who has developed an effective solution for a not-for-profit, environmental or humanitarian effort or in support of broader civic participation. (Industry judge: Maryfran Johnson, Computerworld)

Winner: The CommunityCard from Computech Resources (De Pere, Wisconsin) is a sophisticated application leveraging Lotus and IBM technologies to provide a social services organization with identity cards and a tracking mechanism for case management, assessments and services rendered for its visitors. Notably, the CommunityCard is the only identification available for many homeless clients. The solution also enables the organization to readily comply with federal, state and county government reporting requirements.

Best Tool/Utility Solution -- Honors the best tool or utility used to enhance a business solution that brings measurable market benefits to the customer. These value-added products can include component-based, data integration, or team development tools. (Industry judge: Harry McCracken, PC World)

Winner: DLI.Uploader from DLI.tools, Inc. (Burlington, Ontario, Canada) is an innovative file attachment management system that overcomes the restrictions associated with managing file attachments in a web browser. Since the functionality DLI.Uploader delivers significantly increases employee productivity and can be easily integrated into any Lotus Domino Web application, other IBM/Lotus Business Partners have imbedded the technology into their commercial applications, providing them with a competitive edge.

Service Award
Excellence in Partnering -- Rewards two or more IBM PartnerWorld Business Partners who have joined forces, combining their complementary skills to deliver an outstanding total customer solution.

Winners: Northern Collaborative Technologies (Cumberland, Maine) and Webb Consulting (Lafayette, Colorado) collaborated to create a direct-interface Web site for their customer's worldwide sales and distribution channel, comprised of more than 100,000 users in 100 countries. A Lotus Domino-based solution, it provides highly customized out-of-the-box training for its customer's partners. In addition, the solution resulted in tremendous ROI for the customer and high satisfaction among the customer's partners. In essence, the two firms were able to solve any issues in a responsive and reliable manner and, in this case, to maintain that consistency over a five-year period of working together on this project.

The Beacon Awards offer an opportunity to witness the innovation that IBM PartnerWorld Business Partners demonstrate in their many diverse and comprehensive Lotus software solutions. These solutions provide businesses with the essential collaborative elements necessary for success in today's economy.

About Lotus Software from IBM Lotus Software from IBM sets the standard for truly innovative software and services that reflect the brand's unique representation of the new ways individuals and businesses work together to achieve success. Lotus software is further redefining the concept of conducting business through practical knowledge management, e-business and other groundbreaking ways of connecting ideas, thinkers, buyers, sellers and communities around the world via the Internet. Lotus software is marketed in more than 80 countries worldwide through direct sales and extensive Business Partner channels.

 

###

Lotus, Lotusphere, Lotus Notes, Domino, Sametime, QuickPlace, Discovery Server, LearningSpace, and iNotes are trademarks or registered trademarks of Lotus Development Corporation and/or IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. IBM and WebSphere are trademarks or registered trademarks of IBM. IBM, PartnerWorld, WebSphere, DB2, and Everyplace are trademarks or registered trademarks of IBM Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.

Microsoft is a trademark or registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both. All other trademarks are owned by their respective companies.