Appian and U.S. Army Win DCI's 'Portal Excellence' Award

Design and Deployment of World's Largest Intranet Portal Recognized for Solving Strategic Knowledge Sharing and Collaboration Problems

VIENNA, Va., April 22, 2003 -- Appian, a leading provider of real-time, enterprise web solutions, today announced it received the Digital Consulting Institute (DCI) 2003 Best Internal Portal Award for the design and deployment of Army Knowledge Online (AKO), the U.S. Army's enterprise knowledge management portal, further underscoring Appian's leadership in the high-end, enterprise portal market. AKO is the world's largest collaborative intranet portal, serving more than 1.4 million registered users worldwide. Presently, about 100,000 unique users visit the site daily, generating over 200,000 user sessions a day.

AKO solves the problems of knowledge sharing and collaboration by personalizing the delivery of information through push and pull technologies. Users are able to customize the delivery of content and the appearance of the site, while administrators can push targeted information to users based on their rank, experience, and location. AKO functions as a virtual workspace for all Army personnel anywhere in the world, making it easier to manage, store, and share documents. Additionally, AKO facilitates enterprise-wide collaboration by providing chat rooms, e-mail, instant messaging, a people locator, and access to powerful search capabilities.

"AKO is enabling the sweeping changes necessary to transform the Army into a network-centric, knowledge-based force," said COL. Timothy Fong, Director, Chief Technology Office, U.S. Army. "We are especially proud to have worked with Appian to deploy an enterprise portal that provides secure, ubiquitous access to the Army's applications, information, and data sources, at an unprecedented scale and level of performance."

The award was presented at DCI's recent Enterprise Portals and Web Services Conference (April 16th). A highly competitive field of entries was evaluated for this year's award by DCI's panel of independent experts, including leading analysts, consultants, and editors. The Appian solution for the U.S. Army was selected as the winner based on the portal's architecture, design, ability to solve strategic business problems, and its return on investment. Appian's enterprise portal solutions are implemented using Appian Portal and Appian Collaboration products, and run on an open, standards-based J2EE-compliant application server.

"AKO represents a material change in the way that organizations are doing business and addressing the needs of its employees," said Matt Calkins, President and CEO of Appian. "The successful adoption of AKO underscores the growing recognition of best-of-breed technologies like Appian Portal and Appian Collaboration that unify diverse workforces, streamline business processes, increase productivity, and improve quality of life."

About Appian

Appian, a software and professional services firm, is a leading provider of real-time, enterprise web solutions to the public and commercial sectors. For more information, visit http://www.appiancorp.com, send email to info@appiancorp.com, or call 703.442.4612.

SOURCE Appian

Web Site: http://www.appiancorp.com