AppsCo Software and Brio Technology Announce Alliance

AppsCo Software Inc, a leading provider of data warehouse and analytic application development solutions for Microsoft SQL Server, and Brio Technology Inc, a leading provider of analytic solutions for the e-enterprise, announced a technology alliance that will result in an integrated, seamless end-to-end platform for the development of packaged and easily customizable analytic applications for Microsoft SQL Server. The announcement was made at Insight 2000, Brio's worldwide user conference held in Monterey, Calif. Under terms of the agreement, Brio will integrate AppsMart, AppsCo's software development environment for Microsoft SQL Server, with Brio.Enterprise 6.0, which delivers personalized information access, analysis, and reporting capabilities to every user in an organization. The joint AppsCo-Brio solution will enable businesses to quickly transform data from operational systems into highly targeted "out-of-the box" analytic applications that provide immediate business insights, while at the same time significantly reducing development and deployment time and associated costs.

"AppsCo's AppsMart is a powerful, template-driven development environment for Microsoft SQL Server," said Jannell Wei, director of channel and partner marketing at Brio Technology. "The combination of AppsMart and Brio.Enterprise enables developers to quickly build custom, Web-enabled analytical applications that deliver prepackaged business content to decision makers." Added AppsCo CEO Brian Burnett, "We are pleased to be partnering with Brio to deliver SQL Server customers an end-to-end solution for developing highly customizable data warehouses and out-of-the-box analytic applications. This partnership fully leverages the strengths of our respective companies and provides a compelling solution for companies seeking higher-end analytic solutions than those provided with Microsoft SQL Server and Office2000," Burnett said.

Tightly Integrated Via Meta Data Services in SQL Server 7.0 AppsMart and Brio.Enteprise 6.0 are integrated via the meta data services in SQL Server 7.0 that provides life-cycle management capabilities to store and share software components along with their descriptive information. AppsMart's integration with Microsoft Repository has enabled Brio to automate the generation of reports and analysis needed to deliver out-of-the-box, customizable analytic applications.

"AppsMart's deep integration with SQL Server meta data services ensures it can be seamlessly integrated with leading business intelligence vendors such as Brio Technology to provide highly targeted decision support solutions for SQL Server customers," said Steve Murchie, data warehousing group product manager, SQL Server marketing, Microsoft Corp.

"It is this integration with SQL Server which enables organizations to realize the benefits of lower cost and accelerated deployment of systems." According to Colin White, founder of DataBase Associates, a leading business intelligence consultancy, integrated solutions such as the one announced by AppsCo and Brio are crucial to the next growth phase of business intelligence. "Customers definitely don't want to build their own business intelligence and analytic applications from scratch, and at DataBase Associates, we see a definite move towards companies wanting to purchase integrated componentdriven solutions that provide best-in-class functionality."

About Brio.One

Brio Technology delivers a fully integrated business intelligence solution that provides powerful query, analysis and reporting functionality across both client/server and Web environments. Brio.One is the industry's most complete and scalable platform for building and deploying the widest range of decisionprocessing applications throughout your enterprise. It's unmatched breadth of product functionality includes enterprise reporting, analytical reporting, ad hoc query, and OLAP, as well as tools for building and deploying a wide range of analytical applications.

All of the products within the Brio.One platform are designed to deliver enterprise-caliber scalability and performance and unsurpassed ease of experience to users. And they are fully integrated with our business information portal to provide self-service access to all your existing information assets and systems.

About AppsMart

AppsMart enables developers to quickly build and deploy SQL Server-based data marts and analytic applications. Using a best-in-class analytic application template, developers iterate the application design to meet user requirements and deploy the solution to Microsoft SQL Server. AppsMart includes features for star schema design and deployment, and the automatic generation of OLAP Services cubes, DTS packages and Office2000 reports and documentation, providing developers a rapid start, and consistent methods and techniques when implementing a data warehouse or analytic application on the Microsoft platform.

About Brio Technology

Brio Technology Inc is a business intelligence software provider offering a complete range of solutions to address the decision processing needs of today's Web-enabled e-enterprise. The Brio ONE solution includes software and services which enable organizations to deliver business intelligence, enterprise reporting, and analytic applications in conjunction with an enterprise information portal to provide unmatched ease of experience for all users. Brio ONE enables customers to derive higher business value from all of their enterprise information sources, including e-commerce applications, enterprise resource planning (ERP), sales force automation (SFA) and customer relationship management (CRM) applications as well as data marts, data warehouses and legacy data sources. Brio products are available through direct sales and professional services organizations located in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Australia, and more than 80 countries worldwide.

About AppsCo Software Limited

AppsCo Software Limited, founded in 1998, is a leading supplier of data mart design and analytic application development tools. AppsCo, a Microsoft Certified Solution Provider (MCSP), develops and markets AppsMart, an analytic application development environment. A patent pending technology, AppsMart enables data mart application builders to design data marts based on vertical market solution templates, and standard methods and processes. Backed by venture capital firms 3i, Vertex Management Group, Scottish Equity Partnership and Grampian Enterprise Limited, AppsCo is a privately held company. AppsCo is based in Surrey, United Kingdom, and has U.S. operations in Bellevue, Washington. More information on the company and its AppsMart solution is available on the Web at www.appsco.com, or by calling 425-451-9777.