Item 0995140 94/05/26 14:05 From: DARREN_SMITH@NEXT.COM@INET00# Internet Gateway Subject: NeXT WINS TWO OUT OF FIVE DB/EXPO '94 REALWARE AWARDS FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Karen Logsdon NeXT Computer, Inc. 415-780-3786 or Charlotte Penner Copithorne & Bellows 415-541-0873 NeXT WINS TWO OUT OF FIVE DB/EXPO '94 REALWARE AWARDS Mount Clemens General Hospital and Chrysler Financial Take Top Honors SAN FRANCISCO-May 26, 1994-NeXT Computer, Inc. today announced that two of its customer sites were awarded DB/EXPO '94 RealWare Awards at a ceremony last night. A third NEXTSTEP customer site was named a finalist in the competition that recognized leading applications of technology in five categories, including Enterprise/Client Server; Database in the Office; Improving Application Development Productivity Using Object-Oriented Technology; Interoperability; and Enabling New Business Opportunities. In the most hotly contested category, Enterprise/Client Server, NEXTSTEP customer, Mount Clemens General Hospital received top honors for its patient care application which provides a client/server solution with a graphical user environment for admitting, discharging and transferring of patients; entering all patient-care-related orders; reporting results for orders where applicable; and developing and monitoring of diagnosis-based patient care plans. The user company for the application is a 288-bed, acute care hospital located near Detroit. The user benefits resulting from this application were: 80% reduction in new-employee training time (approximately 200 employees annually); improved productivity by automating several tasks that previously involved significant manual intervention; approximately 15,000 hours saved annually in care planning and other patient care tasks; improved documentation that has already achieved $1,000,000 in patient revenues by capturing previously lost billable services, and which is also expected to reduce future litigation; and elimination of down-time utilizing server and network redundancy. "We are extremely honored to have won this award because we are not a giant in the industry and as a small player we have to use technology appropriately to gain competitive advantages," said Vimal Chowdhry, chief financial officer at Mount Clemens General Hospital. "This award is recognition by our peers that we have done a good job." Chrysler Financial Corporation won the award for Improving Application Development Productivity Using Object-Oriented Technology. In the highly competitive financial marketplace where time-to-market of mission-critical applications translates to real profit (or lost opportunities), Chrysler Financial sought to deliver applications faster, adapt to changing regulations, reduce maintenance cycle times and provide users with an easy-to-learn interface. Using NEXTSTEP's object frameworks and development tools (which include the ApplicationKit, DatabaseKit, ProjectBuilder, InterfaceBuilder, C/Objective C/C++ compilers, debuggers and class browsers), Chrysler Financial reimplemented more than 24 legacy applications to run its daily branch office operations. Example applications include: FleetMaintenance, LoanTerms and NewBusiness. These applications, coexisting with bundled and third-party office productivity applications such as NeXTMail and WordPerfect, have been deployed to more than 50 branch offices and 1200 desktops throughout North America. "NeXT shipped its first software product, NEXTSTEP for intel processors one year ago today," said Ronald Weissman, director of corporate marketing at NeXT Computer, Inc. in a short acceptance speech at the ceremony. "These awards are a great anniversary present for NeXT and demonstrate how fortunate NeXT is to work with these great customers. A year ago, some viewed our rebirth as a software company with skepticism. DB/EXPO underscores NeXT's object technology leadership and the customer acceptance and momentum that we've gained in the past year." A finalist in the Improving Application Development Productivity Using Object-Oriented Technology category, NEXTSTEP customer Quest International and Improve S.A., developed an application called MIRIAD (Multimedia Initiative Re-defining Intelligent Aromatic Design) which is the latest creative tool to be developed for Quest's Fine Fragrance operations based in Paris. Quest's main objective is to explore new ways of creating olfactive structures based upon how consumers see raw materials and key market fragrances. The cutting edge application allows Quest to capture all of its perfumery capabilities in one state-of -the-art Object-Oriented multimedia client-server application. About the RealWare Awards Co-sponsored by Intel Corp., the RealWare Awards program was designed to allow companies exhibiting at DB/EXPO an opportunity to demonstrate their proven business solutions that have made innovative use of database, client/server and related information technology to solve a bonafide business solution. Norm DeNardi, DB/EXPO founder and chief executive officer stated, "What's unique about this awards program is that it mandates that exhibitors submit proven applications-not applications that are still in R & D." Among the criteria, exhibitors are asked to clearly demonstrate how their products are being used by customers to reduce costs, improve information sharing, increase competitiveness and produce measurable business benefits. NEXTSTEP Enables Client/Server and Rapid Application Development NEXTSTEP, the award winning object-oriented operating system software from NeXT, is used by Fortune 1000 corporations and government organizations to rapidly develop and deploy mission critical business applications. NEXTSTEP's business value is in simplifying and speeding the process of developing complex client/server software by providing the industry's first object-oriented framework for distributed computing. In its third release, NEXTSTEP runs on hundreds of industry standard Intel-based PCs, and will soon run native on Hewlett-Packard's PA-RISC workstations and Sun's SPARC workstations. NEXTSTEP's Application Environment also will be integrated into SunSoft's Solaris system software as part of the OpenStep initiative. About NeXT Computer, Inc. NeXT develops and markets the award-winning NEXTSTEP object-oriented software for industry-standard computer architectures. Customers use NEXTSTEP's advanced object environment to rapidly develop and deploy custom, enterprise-wide, client/server applications. NeXT is headquartered in Redwood City, California, and has offices in North America, London, Paris, Munich and Tokyo. # # # # NeXT, the NeXT logo and NEXTSTEP are registered trademarks of NeXT Computer, Inc. All other trademarks mentioned belong to their respective owners. =END=