Actuate Survey Reveals Strong Demand for Spreadsheet Based Reporting; Business Users Want More Excel Reports Available Through Web Interface

SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, CA, Dec. 9, 2002 -- Actuate Corporation, the Information Delivery market leader, today announced the results of a survey of business end users and IT staff which revealed pent-up market demand for web-enabled report creation and distribution products leveraging the spreadsheet paradigm. Fully 65 percent of respondents indicated that it would be valuable to their organization to share data and reports in Excel format through a web interface. The reason most cited being better or easier access to corporate data for internal users to help them do their jobs. Indigo Partners, Inc. recently completed the survey on behalf of Actuate.

Among other findings:

-- 57 percent of end users already put reports into a spreadsheet for easier manipulation; among staff positions the response was nearly 70 percent

-- 81 percent of IT managers admit that their end users dump their reports into spreadsheets for manipulation

-- 51 percent of all respondents wanted more reports available in Excel format as a key attribute of their organization's reporting/analysis solution

The spreadsheet paradigm is clearly the "lingua franca" of most end users. Microsoft Excel emerged as the ubiquitous spreadsheet of choice across the organizations polled, with more than 90 percent citing its use to review or analyze data, either receiving it from or distributing it to others as a primary format. "Rank and file" end users expressed a formidable desire to have simple spreadsheet driven access to underlying data and formulas contained in summary reports (65 percent), a level of need not that much less than executives (70 percent). An unexpectedly high 78 percent of "rank and file" end users prefer to develop their own reports rather than have reports developed for them.

Respondents cited four top customer needs that web-enabled Excel solutions would address:

-- Better or easier of access to data

-- Better or easier distribution

-- Easier support and maintenance

-- Savings due to reduced costs or greater efficiency

Business users in most corporations already use Excel as a personal productivity tool to view, manipulate and share reports from their desktops. The survey revealed that if reporting solutions could leverage this huge installed base of enterprise Excel users -- but also provide server-side controls -- such products would be attractive to business users and IT organizations alike. The four product attributes cited above outscored others in the survey, including personalization and custom formatting, often regarded as more attractive to end users.

Several of those surveyed mentioned the need to deliver reports outside their organizations to users with different reporting systems, but who shared the use of Excel within the enterprise. It is evident that any solution that can combine Excel report creation with web distribution would relieve the pain of many organizations, without sacrificing their investment in current reporting systems.

The survey polled 518 respondents who use, develop or maintain numerical reports in companies with over 500 employees. More than half of those surveyed categorized themselves as report producers (either in IT or line-of-business), with the remainder either report consumers or IT management. The survey was completed in the Third Quarter of 2002.

About Actuate Corporation

Actuate Corporation is the leading provider of Information Delivery solutions for Global 2000 companies and packaged application software vendors. Actuate provides the most effective platform for retrieving business information from corporate databases and delivering interactive Web pages and Excel spreadsheets to customers, prospects, partners and employees. Its infrastructure software is the foundation for applications such as client reporting, key performance indicators, CRM and e-Procurement delivered to communities of information consumers ranging from tens to millions. Actuate content is seamlessly integrated into corporate Web sites and packaged applications and can be printed and used to exchange data with other applications. By instantly delivering personalized content over the Web to all enterprise constituencies -- without downloads -- companies using Actuate can increase revenue, reduce costs and improve customer service. Actuate has over 1,900 direct customers and over 250 OEM partners.

Founded in 1993, Actuate has headquarters in South San Francisco, Calif., and has offices worldwide. For more information on Actuate, visit the company's Web site at www.actuate.com.

Actuate is a registered trademark of Actuate Corporation. Other company names and trademarks are trademarks of their respective companies.

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    CONTACT: Reichert Brady Communications
             Barbara Reichert, 650/212-1112
             barbara@reichertbrady.com