Open Text Announces Industry's Most Powerful, Comprehensive Intranet Suite

Livelink Intranet Suite 7 Makes True Corporate Intranets a Reality, by Providing Integrated Management of Business Processes Documents

Waterloo, ON - 1996-12-11 - - Open Text Corporation (OTEX:NASDAQ) today announced Livelink Intranet Suite 7, the industry's first and only shipping intranet application suite that companies can use to run their businesses, by leveraging their corporate intranets to manage distributed work processes and information across the enterprise, continents and computing platforms.

"Up until today's launch of Livelink Suite 7, the power of Intranets has been exploited in a piece meal fashion because there's been no 'killer application' to make them essential to business success," said Tom Jenkins, president and CEO, Open Text Corporation. "Livelink Suite 7 provides 'industrial strength' search, document management, workflow and project collaboration engines, accessed through Netscape Navigator's industry standard browser, to thousands of users working on and managing documents, projects and processes. Additionally, it uses Java to provide cutting-edge capabilities, such as views of dynamically created workflow maps showing the current status of projects."

Livelink is being applied to mission-critical business activities requiring web-based, highly scalable document and project management applications primarily in the telecommunications, financial services, health care and manufacturing (energy, bio-technology and high technology) industries. These applications include managing human resources, safety procedures, business contracts, technical documentation, product development, customer service operations, quality control, shop floor operations, regulatory standards compliance, standard operating procedures, ISO 9000 compliance and consulting firm consulting methodologies.

Analysts Impressed with Livelink's Power

"The release of Livelink Suite 7 provides organizations with an application that can truly exploit the collaborative power of a corporate intranet," said Ian Campbell, Director of Collaborative and Intranet Computing, International Data Corp. (IDC). "With Livelink, intranets can quickly make the leap from under-utilized concept to tangible business tool." (An IDC White Paper on intranets found that CIOs who want to capture a high return on initial technology investments need tools like Livelink.)

Enhancement Highlights in Livelink Intranet Suite 7

Livelink Project Collaboration

Businesses today needs applications that make their teams - both long standing and ad hoc - more effective. Livelink is the key application for teams working on projects, by providing all the tools and resources required to manage the project to its successful conclusion, even if the team members are distributed across the world. New features include:

One Click Project Page Creation -- with the click of a button, an end-user can create a project page without the assistance of a system administrator

Bulletin Boards -- Project members can post notes to the Bulletin Board which are readily accessible to the entire project team. Posted notes can be set to expire and can be emphasized to denote importance

E-mail Notification -- Suite 7 permits users to subscribe to be notified via e-mail when something significant, such as an object, message or task, changes in the project.

Livelink Library

Vast libraries of business-critical documents can be managed with the enhanced document management functionality of Livelink Suite 7, attesting to the suite's superior scalability. New features include:

Enhanced Audit trails -- Suite 7 tracks the history of folders. View a list of who has seen it, who has modified it, who checked it out of the Library last, etc.

Compound Document Management -- Users can now add, delete, reorder sections and make revisions and releases to compound (or "virtual") documents that are composed of multiple documents and objects.

Version Information and Management -- Users can track references to an object (including documents, multimedia objects, URLs, aliases, generations), purge and set version limits for objects.

Livelink Workflow

Teams need to manage the steps by which their projects are completed. Livelink Workflow does this by modeling virtually any business process, in a highly sophisticated and visual way. By viewing dynamic, real-time and visual steps in a process through the workflow, mission-critical barriers can be identified and removed before they spell disaster. New features include:

Status Screen Update -- Suite 7 Workflow Status Screen will give the user the option to display "Not Archived," "Archived" or "Executing Only" Workflows

Detailed Status Screen -- Access all the objects (documents, attributes) in the workpackage. Managers have the ability with Suite 7 to "drill down" to any given step in the process to review the attributes, comments and see an audit of what has happened in the selected step.

Livelink Search

Computerworld recently ranked Livelink Search number one in its comparison of intranet search engines, in part due to its scalability and Web-based functionality. Livelink Search 7 offers unequaled flexibility, power and ease of use for users searching for information.

Three levels of searching -- Users can now search on three levels -- Livelink documents, network documents and the World Wide Web.

Search by characteristic -- Documents can be searched by alias, generation, workflow, maps, queries and compound documents.

Search based on the user's location -- Search Projects, Workbins, Library and Report Folders for the information you're looking for

Livelink Suite 7's new features enables a productivity leap making it easy for individuals, teams and enterprise-wide departments to access investments in networks, databases and applications, using the power and simplicity of internet technology. "If you can click on a blue underlined word, using a standard Web browser, you can use Livelink Intranet," noted Jenkins, "as Livelink does the heavy lifting behind the scenes.

"With our software there is no floppy included, no software to be downloaded. If you have a browser and a password you can use the system immediately. This has a dramatic effect on the rate of deployment. Our recent announcements have illustrated this fast deployment with thousands of users coming on line within weeks of the installation of our software at companies such as Bell Canada, Qualcomm, Ford Motor and many others," Jenkins added.

Blue Chip Customers Endorse Livelink

"The flexibility of Livelink Intranet is incredible and very price competitive, given that other, traditional document management solutions require additional client software alongside the server software. And with the new features in Livelink Intranet Suite 7, which we'll be piloting soon, the equation becomes even more compelling," said Rick Lyons, Manager, Special Projects IS, Schein Pharmaceutical.

"We wanted a solution that we could use right out of the box, but we also needed a product which could be customized for our specific needs," said David Fritsche, Associate Director of Information Technology at Astra USA, Inc. "Livelink Suite 7's relatively simple deployment and ease of use has filled our requirements better than expected."

Pricing, Availability and Distribution

Livelink Suite 7 is now available for Sun/Solaris, HP/UX and MS Windows NT platforms through Open Text's direct sales force, distributors and VARs, including Siemens Nixdorf Corporation, Pyramid Computing, Canon Japan and Source One.

Pricing begins at $62,500 for a basic Livelink Intranet server, which includes Livelink Library (document management repository), Livelink Search engine (for searching the Livelink Library), Livelink Workflow, Livelink Collaboration and Netscape FastTrack Server. Customers wishing to search additional intranet and/or internet sites require a separate license for Livelink Search. Information on Livelink is available at http://www.opentext.com/livelink, or by calling (800) 507-5777.

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: Open Text, Livelink Intranet, Livelink Intranet Suite 7, 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