Ad-hoc | 8 December 1999 19:26

Ad hoc-Service: plenum AG Cooperation (Englis

Ad-hoc announcement sent by DGAP. The sender is solely responsible for the contents of this announcement. —————————————————————————— AXA Colonia relies on a plenum solution plenum and SUN-Netscape agree a strategic partnership – AXA Colonia standardizes its IT environment – plenum solution accelerates the introduction of Internet technology in large companies – plenum’s cooperation with one of the largest global IT groups internationalizes its solutions business AXA Colonia, a Cologne-based insurance group, is standardizing its IT environment by implementing a new solution, co-developed with plenum AG, Wiesbaden. This solution enables the gradual migration from established mainframe systems to Internet-enabled client/server systems, or for these mainframe systems to be integrated step-by-step into Internet-enabled client/server systems. This allows the AXA Colonia group to push its electronic business strategy ahead rapidly by connecting Internet technology to its existing applications. The long-term goal is to establish the new technology platform as a global standard for the AXA group’s overall future software development. Strategic cooperation with SUN-Netscape Alliance The systems solution implemented, “plenum Architecture Migration”, exceeds AXA Colonia’s concrete integration requirements. It is based on an open standard and links the Sun-Netscape Alliance’s application server with components developed by plenum, and with “Polar”, a software product from Avantis, one of plenum’s associates. This means that, for the first time, a solution can be provided for the complex interaction between client/server structures, mainframe systems and Internet integration, which also meets the extreme requirements posed by large multinationals. Now that the AXA Colonia project has allowed plenum and SUN- Netscape to prove the feasibility of these integration plans, the companies have agreed an extensive strategic cooperation. This partnership with SUN-Netscape Alliance (Palo Alto – US), one of the largest groups of IT companies worldwide, has allowed plenum AG to take another major step towards internationalizing its solutions business. The systems solution – which will be implemented in joint projects – is still unique and will generate customer benefits for both SUN-Netscape and plenum. plenum believes that this cooperation will generate a sales volume of around DEM 10 to 15 million in fiscal year 2000. The partnership with the SUN-Netscape Alliance is opening extensive, international customer potential for the Wiesbaden-based IT company, whose own long-term relationships with large corporations are primarily at a national level. SUN-Netscape Alliance will, in turn, benefit from the fact that it can offer its own customers the expertise brought into the partnership by plenum’s consultants, in particular in the fields of electronic business strategies and Internet Java architectures. plenum solution accelerates the introduction of Internet technologies The plenum solution “Architecture Migration” simultaneously provides an international group of companies such as AXA Colonia with two strategic advantages. On the one hand, as part of its electronic business strategy, the company can connect Internet solutions to the existing mainframe system very quickly, therefore guaranteeing customers and brokers direct access to central data resources. On the other hand, the plenum solution also provides the very first powerful, state-of-the-art technology platform that can form the basis for progressive replacement of mainframe software with networked client/server systems. This allows the integration of flexible and Internet-compatible client/server applications with mainframe systems – a process which to date has been extremely time and cost intensive – to be considerably simplified and accelerated. Contact: Ilka Helmers Investor Relations plenum AG Biebricher Allee 36 65187 Wiesbaden Germany Tel: +49 (0) 611 9882-255 Fax: +49 (0) 611 9882-150 Email: ilka.helmers@plenum.de End of Message