FROST & SULLIVAN LAUNCHES GLOBAL E-BUSINESS PORTAL

Frost & Sullivan Targets 100 Per Cent Growth in Web-Delivered Business with Launch of Global E-Business Portal

Marketing consultancy Frost & Sullivan is pleased to announce the launch of its global e-business Web portal based on a Lotus Domino solution developed by software consultancy Cognita and hosted by Interliant, a leading global application service provider (ASP).

The global Web site, www.frost.com, will help Frost & Sullivan localize both content and delivery of market consulting and corporate training services and is a major step in the drive towards global e-enablement.

Frost & Sullivan annually produces up to 500 market reports that have historically been delivered by post, email and online. It now intends its new Web site to become a major distribution channel. With the added ability to personalize reports and allow interaction with clients, it aims to deliver more precisely and relevantly to a wider market. At the same time, it also wants to streamline business processes and make better use of internal information.

"The Web site has already exceeded our expectations in allowing us to achieve our ambitious business goals," said Andrew Small, Frost & Sullivan's Managing Director, EMEA. "We anticipated that it would account for 50 per cent of sales within a year, but it achieved that within six weeks with sales now in the region of 80 per cent. We now expect that this will increase to 90 per cent once the rest of the content is uploaded," he continued.

"Frost.com will help the entire organization in its continuous effort to become fully e-Commerce integrated so that all our branches worldwide can share information more effectively. Because of these demands, we needed to find a combination of suppliers able to work efficiently together to deliver a complete solution, which is both reliable and scalable. Together, Cognita and Interliant have demonstrated that they have the expertise to implement and support a solution to meet our needs and we are happy to entrust them with business critical information," he said.

Frost & Sullivan selected Interliant based on its reputation for expertise and experience in reliably hosting similar Lotus Domino systems. According to Small, Interliant has been able to provide the ideal hosting solution that meets Frost & Sullivan's external needs as well as supporting better use of existing internal information. This enables staff, for example, to share company-wide client and colleague contact information. The implementation will enable Frost & Sullivan to achieve its goal of continuing to expand its European Web-delivered business by in excess of 100 per cent a year.

The Web site and supporting application suite, developed by Cognita, and hosting solution, provided by Interliant, have been designed to be rapidly scalable, enabling Frost & Sullivan to build up their services quickly and easily. Frost & Sullivan has also been impressed with the speed of implementation with rollout of the entire implementation within a few months.

"This latest implementation of a hosted Lotus Domino environment underlines Interliant's expertise in translating the needs of world leading companies into a swift implementation of a robust solution," David Yuile, Managing Director, Interliant UK, commented. "The 24-hour service level agreement with an extremely high level of security gives Frost & Sullivan peace of mind that their implementation will be reliable and their valuable data safe. Also the hosting solution has reduced the administration required, freeing up resources that allow Frost & Sullivan to flexibly respond to their clients' needs," Yuile added.

Gary Grant, Marketing Director at Cognita added: "This was a demanding business requirement which required a significant piece of development. The combination of a Lotus Domino Web site, with application logic implemented in Java and integration with Frost & Sullivan's existing CRM system required a secure and very robust server platform. We were pleased to be able to work with Interliant to ensure the site we developed was hosted in an environment robust enough to handle the scale and speed of implementation Frost & Sullivan needed."

About Interliant

Interliant Inc is a leading global application service provider (ASP) and pioneer in the ASP market. Interliant's INIT Solutions Suite includes messaging and knowledge management, security, e-commerce, customer relationship management, enterprise resource planning, distributed learning, Web-site hosting and Web-based rental applications. Interliant, headquartered in Purchase, NY, has forged strategic alliances with the world's leading software, networking and hardware manufacturers including Microsoft, Dell Computer Corporation, Oracle Corporation, BMC Software, Network Solutions, IBM, Sun Microsystems Inc, and Lotus Development Corp. Interliant does business in the UK through a subsidiary. For more information about Interliant, visit www.interliant.com; for Interliant UK, visit www.interliant.co.uk.

About Cognita

Cognita, a UK based software consultancy, specializes in developing large scale and high performance Lotus Domino and Java powered Internet sites and Intranet applications including CRM solutions, workflow applications, and distributed content management. The company has a strong and proven track record in delivering end-to-end Web publishing, personalised Web portals and e-business solutions.

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, an international marketing consulting and management training company, has been providing the business community with authoritative and timely market information covering a broad spectrum of industries for nearly four decades. The company's unrivalled expertise in research analysis, innovative business solutions and management training has placed it at the cutting edge of the business intelligence world. Frost & Sullivan has undergone significant growth in recent years and is now one of the fastest growing marketing consulting companies, with head offices in the US, Europe and Asia.

Contact Kristina Menzefricke, +44 20 7343 8376, kristina.menzefricke@fs-europe.com.