Partner Press Release
E2open Executive Named to Chair RosettaNet Solution Provider Board

Board to Promote B2B Sandards to the High Tech Industry

For Release July 31, 2001

BELMONT, CA --

E2open, the global collaboration network for the electronics industry, today announced that Bhagwan "B.D." Goel, vice president of development and operations, has been appointed chairman of RosettaNet's newly formed Solution Provider Board. RosettaNet is an independent, non-profit consortium dedicated to the collaborative development and rapid deployment of open Internet-based business standards.

The Solution Provider Board is the fourth to be named since RosettaNet was formally launched in 1998 by a group of leading information technology firms. In the two years following the launch, the consortium formed two additional supply chain managing boards which represent the electronic components and semiconductor manufacturing industries.

The Solution Provider Board's charter is to drive critical development and implementation strategies and initiatives supporting robust collaboration among global electronics companies through the development and promotion of RosettaNet industry standards.

Goel was selected during the board's initial meeting on June 13 in San Jose, California, by board members from companies including Agile Software, BEA Systems, E2open, eConnections, Fujitsu, i2 Technologies, Infoteria, Manugistics, Mentor Graphics, NEC, Peregrine/Extricity, SAIC, SAP, Syntricity, TIBCO Software, Viacore and webMethods.

The average electronics company has thousands of trading partners dispersed throughout the world, but often are using outdated, inefficient communication methods,said B.D. Goel, vice president of development and operations, E2open. More effective Internet-based collaboration will require agreed-upon standards, and our goal on the solution provider board is to accelerate that adoption in the electronics industry. Through RosettaNet, I hope to play a part in helping to establish these standards and drive the industry forward.

Product Lifecycle Collaboration Five Key Requirements
Executive participation in standards bodies like RosettaNet is one of the five key requirements of E2open's industry-first global collaboration platform for the electronics industry. The other four requirements are security management, any-to-any interoperability, enterprise-ready reliability, and global, scalable networking. Goel's leadership role will allow him to work closely with RosettaNet's existing boards to ensure a more cohesive partnership between senior executives in the supply chain and the solution partner community in support of RosettaNet's common goal of pervasive B2B e-business in the high technology industry.

RosettaNet Internet-based business standards create a common language and open e-business processes for global, high technology trading networks. E2open, founded by ten leading original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and electronics suppliers to connect their extended supply chains, is working closely with RosettaNet alongside other partner companies to develop many-to-many collaboration standards for managing the entire product lifecycle. E2open's membership and active participation in its standards creation process supports this goal.

For B2B to become pervasive, an industry must unite with a common goal. Major players must commit to working together to solve critical supply chain integration challenges and implement the necessary solutions quickly, said Jennifer Hamilton, chief executive officer of RosettaNet. Through the leadership demonstrated by E2open and the other Solution Provider Board members, I am confident that we will achieve an unparalleled level of collaboration, resulting in widespread standards adoption and enhanced supply chain interoperability.

E2open represents a shared service model for inter-company collaboration, a model that is essential to lowering the cost of supply chain management and bringing visibility to the entire product lifecycle. Through its participation in the RosettaNet consortium and its involvement in the development of the iHub framework to enable real-time exchange of common information used in day-to-day supply chain management, E2open is advancing many-to-many collaboration that will help remove supply chain inefficiencies and directly benefit manufacturers.

About E2open
E2open is the global collaboration network for the electronics industry. E2open enables effective collaboration among OEMs, contract manufacturers, distributors and suppliers and supports the entire product lifecycle, including design, manufacturing, procurement and asset recovery for computing, networking and consumer electronics products. E2open was formed by industry leaders Acer, Hitachi, IBM, LG Electronics, Lucent Technologies, Matsushita Electric (Panasonic), Nortel Networks, Seagate Technology, Solectron and Toshiba, as well as the prominent investors Crosspoint Venture Partners and Morgan Stanley Dean Witter.