LAVA Systems Inc. Outlines Vision For Building Business Process Enablement Solutions In Support Of Knowledge Management Environments

LAVA Business Process Enabler and LAVA Knowledge Management System products will seamlessly integrate enterprise repositories and applications

Toronto, ON - 1998-05-13 - LAVA Systems Inc. (TSE:LVA) today presented a wide-ranging vision for building enterprise-wide, industry-specific solutions that enable knowledge workers to combine information from relational and object databases, proprietary document management systems and business applications such as SAP R/3, J.D. Edwards or Lotus Notes, in support of their main business processes.

"We will deliver new product families - LAVA Business Process Enabler(TM) and LAVA Knowledge Management System(TM) - in Q3 1998. These will provide a quantum leap for enterprises frustrated by the lack of industry-specific solutions that take advantage of their existing technology investments. LAVA will supply clear returns on investments that result in our clients gaining competitive advantage," said Peter Hamilton, President and CEO of LAVA Systems Inc.

Reaction to the LAVA vision, which has been reviewed with leading corporations and industry analysts worldwide, has been uniformly positive. "LAVA provides a well-rounded enterprise solution for organizations," said Jennifer Harty, Systems Analyst with Doculabs, an independent advisory firm that recently conducted a hands-on evaluation of LAVA Enabler. "The system offers strong business process enablement tools that integrate with line-of-business applications, back-office tools and front office applications. The result is an integrated system that ties applications into a knowledge management strategy."

Deployment of document-enabled vertical applications (or DEVAs as they are termed by the Gartner Group) are the focus of the new LAVA products; a strategy that is gaining momentum among industry analysts and users.

Deploying The Vision

LAVA's new products support a distributed n-tier architecture comprised of client services, application and information foundation layers. The first tier provides a choice of either a platform-independent web browser based interface, or a fully functional Microsoft Windows(TM) client. Both can be centrally configured and distributed globally, providing a low cost of ownership. The MS Windows client application, named the LAVA Integrated Desktop (LAVA LID), supports a rich environment for collaborative working, including a customizable user interface with a single point of access to all enterprise information, and a 'tear off' window capability, for saving active windows for future use. The LID is a true 32-bit application that integrates seamlessly into the Windows desktop environment.

The application layer provides a scaleable, distributed and fault-tolerant architecture for secure, high throughput environments. This architecture is extensible through the use of plug-in modules for text search, workflows, encryption, load balancing and LAVA's federated search technology - the ability to search multiple information sources simultaneously. The information foundation layer manages access to a host of diverse information repositories and provides the ability to dynamically include new information sources. These information sources include but are not limited to enterprise applications such as SAP, J.D. Edwards and Oracle; document management systems; ODBC databases, imaging and computer output to laser (COLD) systems, as well as Lotus Notes and Microsoft Exchange message stores.

Industry-Solution Focus

The LAVA Business Process Enabler(TM) and LAVA Knowledge Management System(TM) products are capable of delivering cross-industry solutions such as customer service/call center and accounts payables/receivables. Given their power to enable and integrate back-office, high-volume transaction systems with desktop applications, LAVA's newest products are destined for widespread adoption in LAVA's target markets. These include - in the insurance sector - use in motor vehicle, personal injury and household claims processing and general policy administration; in the Financial Services sector use in e-business, loans administration and international payments; as well as in Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) procurement and supply chain management solutions.

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For more information, please contact

Margaret E. Dobbin
Director, Industry Analyst Relations
Open Text Corporation
+1-519-888-7111 ext.2410
mdobbin@opentext.com

Monta Kerr-Johnson
Account Director
High Road Communications
(416) 368-8348
mkerr@highrd.com