City of Boise Selects Percussion Software's Rhythmyx 5.5 ECM to Enhance Its Web Presence and Improve e-Government

WOBURN, MA - December 6, 2004 - Percussion Software, a leading developer of practical software solutions enabling customers to maximize the value and quality of enterprise content, today announced that the City of Boise, Idaho, has selected the newly released Rhythmyx 5.5 Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system to improve e-government and enhance its online presence at www.cityofboise.org.

The City of Boise's dynamic, interactive online presence provides convenient, cost-effective services for residents, visitors and businesses. City of Boise anticipated tremendous growth in the volume of documents, images, graphics and Web content for this site and began planning for a CMS in 2002 to ensure that the content volume could be handled in the most efficient and cost-effective manner. The City decided to implement a Content Management System to eliminate redundant and out-of-date content and to ensure that Web pages adhere to city policies and mandated accessibility standards. After completing an extensive formal bid process involving an in-depth evaluation of competing solutions, the City of Boise selected Rhythmyx 5.5.

"Our selection criteria included recognizing stable vendors that had market share, a substantial customer base and recent installations for organizations similar to ours that have mid-market needs," said Kathy Polensky, Webmaster, Information Technology for the City. "We chose Rhythmyx 5.5 because it will enhance the City's ability to interact with citizens and employees online. It will improve our authors' ability to contribute to the Web, save time and cut down on the maintenance that a Web site typically requires."

Polensky continued, "We were impressed by how Percussion listened to us and offered creative ideas for solving the issues we're facing. One good example is .NET integration. Our current site and all of our e-commerce and e-government capabilities are .NET-based. We have several large .NET applications to integrate with the CMS, including our online budget presentation and reporting. Percussion's people were the most knowledgeable about how to make the integration happen. It's one of a wide range of things that sold us on Rhythmyx 5.5, including the FastForward for WCM quick implementation capabilities, automatic Text Extraction and a flexible architecture that will make it easy and affordable to add new groups of users as we grow."

The City of Boise's selection committee chose Rhythmyx 5.5 because of a number of features that are ideal for the City's needs:

• FastForward for WCM - A quick implementation package that delivers many commonly-used Web capabilities (such as managed navigation, automatic list generation, etc.) out-of-the-box, for a faster time-to-value and higher ROI. Polensky noted that FastForward will enable the City to implement Content Management quicker by avoiding months of unnecessary development on basics. It also allows developers to focus customization efforts on priorities from the City's e-government and e-commerce backlog, such as an enhanced jobs posting interface.
• Digital Asset Management (DAM) - The City's authors have thousands of images to manage, and they will make good use of the ability to search, store, preview, use thumbnails and catalog images with Rhythmyx 5.5. The authors can also manage the City's growing and very popular library of streaming videos - created by a talented team of Public Relations personnel for police, public works, training, etc.
• Text Extraction - Rhythmyx 5.5 features the industry's first Text Extraction capability. It simplifies the conversion of text the City creates as PDFs or Microsoft Word documents for easy reuse on the City of Boise Web sites.
• WebDAV Support - The City is already using Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) within the Web site. Now, Rhythmyx 5.5 will provide all authors with the drag-and-drop ease to check-in/check-out and edit content from Rhythmyx via WebDAV-compliant applications such as Word, Adobe or FrontPage.
• Easy Content Reuse Through Enhanced Search - With Rhythmyx 5.5's dynamic search capabilities, users can easily locate, update and reuse content and eliminate redundant copies.
• Affordable Scalability - The Rhythmyx 5.5 De-Coupled Delivery Architecture separates content production from delivery channels, a flexible approach that easily and affordably accommodates the addition of more users over time.

In addition, Rhythmyx 5.5 will speed end-user adoption through its intuitive user interface, which requires minimal training and no knowledge of HTML, and through Active Assembly, which makes it easy for authors to create, edit and update new Web pages. Rhythmyx enables the City's authors to edit content in several different ways: using Word, via a Web form or by editing the Web page in-line. It also enables authors to work in the way that's most comfortable by providing two ways to locate content, via the folder structure or by navigating to a specific page.

"The City of Boise is a perfect example of how mid-tier organizations are getting quick ROI and building long-term value with Rhythmyx 5.5," said Barry Reynolds, president and CEO of Percussion Software. "The City didn't want to spend a fortune on a high-end enterprise solution, settle for a watered-down high-end offering or be limited by the lack of flexibility of a low-end product. They wanted a full-function true ECM solution that meets all of their core needs, and that's what we're delivering in Rhythmyx 5.5."