Open Text advances its lead in collaborative knowledge management with the launch of Livelink Intranet 8

Modular Architecture, Custom Workspaces and Greatly Expanded Functionality Provide Enterprises with a True Collaborative Application for Intranets and Extranets

Chicago, IL - 1998-04-06 - -- Open Text Corporation (NASDAQ: OTEX) today introduced Livelink Intranet 8, the next generation of collaborative knowledge management for the enterprise. By combining a new modular architecture with enhanced collaborative functionality, Livelink 8 offers users unprecedented power and extensibility to share knowledge and collaborate within an organization.

"Livelink 8 ushers in a whole new era in collaborative knowledge management," said Abe Kleinfeld, Open Text's Senior Vice-President, Marketing. "Livelink 8 helps organizations get their work done more efficiently and easily than ever before, and everyone reaps the benefits of knowledge management along the way."

Livelink has quickly gained market acceptance by significantly increasing a company's ability to innovate and respond to changing market and competitive conditions. Livelink is an enterprise-scalable collaborative application that lets users easily form project teams across the organization and work together to speed product cycles, improve customer service, develop new ideas and solve problems in a rich collaboration and knowledge-sharing environment. Livelink 8 elevates those benefits to the enterprise level.

"For the first time, an enterprise can gain a global view of itself. It can see where it's been, what it is working on and where it is going, so it can better chart its course into the future," said Mr. Kleinfeld.

Many of the world's leading Global 2000 companies are using Livelink to better achieve their business objectives. Open Text has worked closely with its customer base to ensure that enhancements to Livelink meet their corporate needs.

"Livelink 8 adds a new level of collaborative power to our Livelink solution," said Mike Muegel, Motorola Compass Program Manager. "We've seen our employees' productivity improve since the deployment of Livelink last year and Livelink 8 will go even further toward helping us meet our corporate objectives. The improvements made to Livelink 8 are critical to our intranet's continued evolution, especially in the areas of enterprise knowledge management. Livelink is still the only product which scales from the workgroup, to the organization, and then to the enterprise. It allows us to deploy a single, unified solution to Motorolans world-wide which addresses our knowledge, project, and process management requirements."

With Livelink 8, Open Text introduces significant new product enhancements including a new modular architecture, a redesigned user interface, and powerful new functionality.

Web-Based Modular Architecture

Livelink 8 features a new modular architecture that facilitates the development and administration of value-added modules that leverage Livelink's five tightly-integrated core services: Information Retrieval, Knowledge Library Management, Business Process Automation, Virtual Team Collaboration, and Group Scheduling/Calendaring. These modules can be developed by Open Text, customers and third parties to significantly enhance Livelink's core functionality, and are easily maintained and upgraded through Livelink's module administration facility.

Some of the new modules and services developed and offered by Open Text include:

Personal, Project and Enterprise Workspaces, which provide users with multiple views of the enterprise and its activities for improved knowledge-sharing and navigation.

Livelink LiveReports, a powerful and unique reporting tool that provides managers with instant insight into the activities and relevant knowledge developing across the enterprise, increasing the organization's ability to quickly respond to changing market or competitive conditions.

Livelink Workflow, implemented in Java, now allows end users to design and initiate workflows using a simple drag-and-drop user interface within their browser. Requiring no special programming skills, any authorized Livelink user can now automate even the most complex business processes.

Livelink Enterprise Spider, re-architected in Livelink 8 for extreme speed and scalability, can automatically "crawl" a corporate intranet or the World Wide Web to collect and deliver specified information to project teams, allowing them to build a unified and up-to-the-minute searchable database. Livelink Enterprise Spider has been tested to crawl over one million pages per day.

Livelink Change Agents, which monitor activities and objects such as documents, discussions, workflows and tasks across the enterprise to alert users of important changes.

Livelink Explorer, a fully functional Microsoft® Windows® Explorer user interface within the user's Web browser that dramatically reduces training time and costs for new customers familiar with the Microsoft Windows environment.

Livelink Forms, Java-based electronic forms tightly integrated with Livelink Workflow to intelligently collect and act on user input allowing organizations to easily automate most common business processes such as human resources change forms, purchase requisitions, or expense report routing and approval.

Livelink SDK, enhanced APIs and an improved application development environment facilitate rapid customization and extension of Livelink's powerful feature set to allow developers to meet a company's specific needs and integrate Livelink with enterprise applications such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) or financial systems.

Enhanced User Interface

In addition to personal, project and enterprise workspace views, Livelink now includes a user-configurable Java frame bar that saves useful and often-visited Livelink locations and objects in a "favorites" pull-down menu bar. And a detachable Java news ticker can be configured to show continuously updated Livelink Channel news that is being published by users and departments throughout the enterprise.

Powerful New Functionality

Livelink 8 introduces many new features at the user and administrator levels, including:

• Livelink Channels which allow users to publish relevant news on activities, projects and events to project members or the enterprise.
• Livelink Search now allows users to search for all knowledge and activities in Livelink and the corporate intranet, including tasks, discussions, documents, workflows and much more. Search results provide users with the context of the knowledge retrieved to ensure maximum benefit.
• New sophisticated searching features include intelligent abstracts and the ability to create information "slices" for greatly improved relevance of search results.
• Expanded collaboration functionality includes nested projects and tasks, project member role assignment, multiple threaded discussion databases within the same project and a project outline that provides a bird-eye view of any project, subprojects and contents.
• Improved file conversion filters for indexing and on-the-fly HTML viewing of most popular office formats, including Microsoft® Word® 97, Excel® 97 and PowerPoint® 97.
• Interchange Pools allow organizations to seamlessly integrate Livelink with data from legacy systems through data flow processes.

"Livelink 8 strongly positions Open Text to define the collaborative knowledge management marketplace," said Gerry Murray, Research Manager, Document Image and Workflow Management, International Data Corporation. "Livelink 8's new modular architecture and enhanced functionality provide powerful collaborative knowledge management capabilities, enabling organizations to speed their metabolism and achieve maximum responsiveness. Quite simply, Livelink Intranet helps organizations get work done."

Pricing and Availability

Livelink Intranet 8 is scheduled for availability in May 1998. Livelink is priced at $75,000 per server, and $97 for each named user (minimum of 100 users). Livelink runs on Microsoft Windowsâ NT and the leading UNIX platforms and supports most popular relational database management systems. Fully Web-based and open-architected to ensure rapid deployment, Livelink requires just a standard Web browser on users' desktops to access its full functionality.

Release Disclaimer

This news release may contain forward-looking statements relating to the future performance of Open Text Corporation. Forward-looking statements, specifically those concerning future performance, are subject to certain risks and uncertainties, and actual results may differ materially. These risks and uncertainties are detailed from time to time in the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), including the final prospectus for the company's initial public offering of common stock in January 1996, Form 10-K for the year ended June 30, 1997, and Form 10-Q for the quarters ended September 30, 1997, and December 31, 1997. Note to Editors: Livelink Pinstripe, Livelink 8, Livelink Search, Livelink Library, Livelink Workflow and Livelink Project Collaboration are trademarks of Open Text Corporation. All other trademarks are the property of their respective companies.

For more information, please contact

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

Sarah Burns
High Road Communications
(416) 368-8348
sburns@highrd.com

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