Buell Duncan General Manager, ISV and Developer Relations IBM Corporation

Actuate Corporation, a leader in Enterprise Reporting and Performance Management Applications that empower 100% of users to achieve breakthrough corporate performance and an IBM Financial Services Cluster Partner, today announced that it has joined IBM's "ISV Advantage for Industries" Initiative, a program designed to provide independent software vendors (ISVs) with technical and marketing support to help meet the specific needs of the financial services industry. Customers are seeking industry-specific solutions that help them better integrate processes and applications internally and externally and allow them to quickly respond to changing market opportunities.

As part of the ISV advantage initiative, Actuate and IBM will commit to work together on joint marketing, collaborative selling, implementation services, software integration and performance optimization. IBM will incorporate Actuate solutions in their financial services solution maps and promote Actuate as the leading Enterprise Reporting solution in the financial services sector. The expanded relationship will deliver next generation online reporting and analysis for consistent multi-channel customer experience and unified customer insight to both IBM's and Actuate's financial services customers.

Actuate Enterprise Reporting applications will be optimized for IBM eServer pSeries and xSeries computing platforms running on Linux, AIX, or Windows environment, and IBM's full suite of middleware offerings, including WebSphere, Information Management, Rational, Lotus, and Tivoli. Based on these products, Actuate and IBM will develop and market SOA-based solutions, enabling financial institutions to build applications in a flexible, loosely coupled, componentized fashion. As a result, financial institutions can keep up with customer needs evolving business processes, stringent regulatory requirements and strategies to maximize competitive advantage.

"Our customers want scalable, cost effective, and integrated business solutions that address their business needs and are optimized for their IT environments," said Ilene Vogt, senior vice president, Global Field Operations. "We believe that Actuate applications combined with IBM's superior infrastructure helps financial services institutions attract new customers, increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, improve efficiency, and reduce costs using a variety of internal and customer-facing reports and data management solutions."

"Business customers in the financial services industry are seeking open and dependable solutions that can span multiple computing environments," said Buell Duncan, general manager, ISV & Developer Relations, IBM. "We are pleased that Actuate has joined ISV Advantage and are dedicated to working with IBM as a partner of choice to meet the needs of our joint customers."

The new ISV Advantage for Industries program provides extended benefits for select global industry ISVs adopting IBM's on-demand solutions and committing to go to market with IBM for a majority of their business. Built on the success of IBM's "ISV Advantage for SMB" program, ISV Advantage for Industries provides a growth path for ISVs who want a deeper relationship with IBM.

As in ISV Advantage for SMB, ISV Advantage for Industries members will make tangible technology commitments to specific IBM middleware and hardware platforms to support IBM's on-demand strategy. Actuate will also work closely with IBM to expand its visibility in financial services industry through various co-marketing and sales activities.

ISV Advantage for Industries is administered by IBM's PartnerWorld, the developer resource for IBM Business Partners. It is a worldwide program designed to help software developers reach broader markets, lower their costs of doing business, and take their products to market faster.

Actuate Corporation is a leader in Enterprise Reporting and Performance Management Applications that empower 100% of users to achieve breakthrough corporate performance. Actuate provides the most scalable, reliable, flexible and high-performing reporting capabilities for every application in the enterprise. Customers use Actuate to deliver information in context to users inside and outside the firewall as Performance Management and Customer Self-Service applications, managed spreadsheet applications and Java reporting applications.

Actuate has over 3,500 customers globally in a range of industries including banking, insurance, manufacturing, communications, and government. Founded in 1993, Actuate has headquarters in South San Francisco, Calif., with offices worldwide. Actuate is listed on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol ACTU.