Pelephone Selects Applix for Scalable OLAP Solution

Applix Inc, a global e-Business solutions company, announced an agreement with Pelephone, Israel's second largest cellular network and handset supplier, to deliver its premier real-time, multi-dimensional Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) solution, iTM1. Through its channel partner in Israel, BICONIX, Applix will provide Pelephone the business intelligence capability for insight and analysis of cellular customers' usage activities. One of the most scalable OLAP products, Applix's iTM1 will analyze customer profiles for over 1.2 million Pelephone subscribers.

"Applix iTM1, together with BICONIX, was able to provide the expertise in designing large multidimensional systems that can help us consolidate and analyze data instantaneously, all in real time," said Efraim Deutch, vice president, information systems, Pelephone. "This solution will give us the advantage to manage our business and provide our customers with optimal service and rate plans that they deserve. We will have a competitive advantage to foster real partnerships with our customers."

In the increasingly competitive cellular service market, Pelephone's primary objective is to provide a unique service to its customer base for attracting new and retaining existing customers. Key to customer service and growth in the market is the ability to offer competitive rates and service plans, tailored to the needs of each user. With Applix's iTM1 business intelligence solution, Pelephone will be able to understand individual subscribers' usage and evaluate service activity to offer the most competitive, customized and optimal rate plan for each subscriber.

"Being proactive with customers' needs is the only way forward," commented Martin Richmond-Coggan, vice president, business development, Applix Inc. "In a customer-driven economy with unlimited choices, it is critical that companies have a real-time connection with their customers, ongoing insight to business activity, and the ability to take immediate action to revise, modify and deliver valuable service. The evaluation process that Pelephone conducted has confirmed our view that iTM1 is the only OLAP product that can scale to accommodate Pelephone's volume of data, complex calculations and analysis demands. Critical to Pelephone's requirements is the ability to build and manage multi-million member dimensions, achieve very fast load times of large quantities of data and deliver calculated results within seconds."

As part of the contract, Applix is developing a 64 bit processing architecture to enable iTM1 to handle large-volume data sets required for concurrent users to analyze Pelephone's growing subscriber base. iTM1 achieves its multidimensional calculation performance by holding all the data in RAM and performing the complex calculations on demand. By scaling to 64 bit processing, Applix will provide a platform for supporting larger quantities of RAM. This demonstrates Applix's iTM1 as a fully scalable OLAP product for enterprise planning, analysis, modeling and reporting applications.

Mr. David Donin, president, BICONIX International Ltd, said, "The negotiations with Pelephone Israel started six months ago. Pelephone's management checked and thoroughly tested five OLAP systems, such as Microsoft OLAP, SAS, ORACLE and Applix/BICONIX and decided to purchase the OLAP solution, iTM1. Pelephone reached the conclusion that the iTM1 OLAP engine is the best solution for their needs, particularly as they have the technical support and know-how of BICONIX's team in Israel."

About Applix

Applix Inc, headquartered in Westboro, Mass. enables interactive and collaborative e-Business processes throughout Web-based communities. Applix eBusiness Solutions include Applix iEnterprise, and iCustomerCommunity.com - an interactive, Web-based community for the entire e-Business value chain. Applix delivers a comprehensive community for planning functions (iPlanning) including budgeting, financial, customer and operational analysis with a set of real-time Business Intelligence/OLAP applications that uses OLAP technology provided by Applix iTM1. More information can be found at www.applix.com.

About Pelephone

Pelephone Communications Ltd is a leading cellular communications provider in Israel. As the nation's first operator, Pelephone pioneered Israel's cellular communications revolution, resulting in one of the world's highest market penetration of mobile phones. The company has maintained its leadership position by introducing leading edge CDMA digital technology, under the brand name Next, which enables fast evolution to the W-CDMA, alongside NAMPS analog technology. During 2000 Pelephone will continue to lead by launching the country's first mobile Internet service, GONEXT. In marketing Pelephone is also an innovative leader offering Israel's first off-the-shelf, pre-paid products in the country's supermarkets. Sales reached $716 million in 1999 and the company has 1,800 employees. As of December 1999, Pelephone has over 1.2 million subscribers and the company's priority is to provide these customers with the best possible service. Pelephone is a joint venture of Bezeq the Israel Telecommunications Corporation and Motorola NMG (US), two major communications companies with world-class experience and expertise.

About BICONIX

BICONIX International Ltd, is a leading provider of OLAP software solutions enabling planning, reporting and analysis of enterprise business data. Since 1995, BICONIX has been an Applix iTM1 Lead Business Partner and serves as the distributor of iTM1 Software products in Israel and the Middle East. BICONIX has been pushing the boundaries of analytical technology, providing powerful OLAP solutions to some of the most complex and largest analytical models to leading companies from all industries including Telecommunications, Banking and Finance, Insurance, Manufacturing, Sales and Marketing, Utilities, as well as Educational and Non-profit sectors. BICONIX provides a full scope of consulting services including analysis, design, development, training and support services commensurate with international standards.