Aplana Software and M-Tech's hotSOS Solution wins Microsoft Winning Customers Award

Aplana Software -- a leading Russian software services provider, has been named a winner in the Winning Customers Award category of 2004 Microsoft- Partner Program Awards. The award is given for the development of hotSOS (Hotel Service Order Optimization System), a project fulfilled for M-Tech a US based supplier of quality management software for the hospitality industry.

The Winning Customers Award was launched this year as part of Microsoft- Partner Program to recognize partners' successful implementations of solutions on the Microsoft platform that "wins" customers in a competitive situation. The award was assigned to seven Microsoft Certified partners in EMEA region that were able to demonstrate customer benefits in such terms as developer and deployment productivity, lowest cost solution and faster time-to-market, operations productivity and scalability. All Microsoft- Partner Program Awards will be presented during Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2004 in Toronto, July 11th-13th.

Management Technologies (M-Tech) develops and markets their solutions aimed at helping hotels maximize guest satisfaction by streamlining internal workflows and tracking guest incidents. With over 600 hotels in 34 countries worldwide using its solutions, M-Tech and its customers were faced with the ongoing system maintenance of onsite version upgrades, integration with other systems and expanding user requirements for enterprise data. M-Tech decided to migrate its solutions to enterprise, managed solutions, and it selected Aplana Software as its development partner. The implementation of this new business model required re-engineering of M-Tech's Microsoft RAD award winning Espresso quality management Suite based on new technologies.

Aplana Software and M-Tech agreed on using web-services and the Microsoft .NET framework as the technological foundation for the new offering - hotSOS. This innovative solution updated and extended legacy functionality with exciting new enterprise and wireless functionality. The project resulted in exceptional customer satisfaction for M-Tech and its hotel customers.

• M-tech significantly decreased on-going maintenance costs of worldwide product installations as a result of fully automated workstation upgrades, interactive user support over the Internet and other features. M-Tech has been able to grow its client base by 70% to over 1000 hotels without growing its team.
  
  
• M-tech gained a strong competitive advantage through more effective satisfaction of customer needs with a lower cost of ownership. M-Tech has been able to address its hotel customers' desires to share data across multiple properties to ensure quality standards are met across the enterprise and that customer incidents are centrally stored.
  
  
• Faster deployment resulting from standardized procedures for data acquisition and predefined configuration templates. Just within 2 months after it was released, the system was rolled-out in 450 hotels worldwide. Another 450 existing customers are now being moved from earlier version to hotSOS. Among the early adopters are leading international hotel operators, and thousands of hotels are now evaluating the solution.
  
  
• Continuous and seamless future product development due to web services and .NET technologies employed and modular architecture: easy integration with legacy IS using a standardized web-service interface, quick connection of new communication channels, product adaptability to new vertical markets (such as business centers, hospitals, others)
  
  
• M-Tech's hotel customers benefit from all of the above plus they benefit from the real-time enterprise analysis of multi-hotel operations, so they benefit the most. Real-time analysis allows for corporate personnel to track individual hotel performance and define corporate opportunities to enhance quality.

Anatoliy Babayev, Director of Software Development Management Technologies: "M-Tech is in the business of satisfying its customers' customers, hotel guests, by enabling hoteliers to provide a better product and be more responsive to guest needs. Our .NET solution, hotSOS, enables us to offer a best of breed solution with a lower total cost of ownership. As an enterprise application, it opens more possibilities for our customers. With data from multiple hotels and guest stays available in one place, many are looking at hotSOS as the operational arm of their CRM initiatives. The market is responding very favorably, and we are very excited about what it can offer our customers into the future."

Victor Weinstein, CEO, Aplana Software: "We are proud with such a honorary award from Microsoft and recognition of our project results at the global level. However the customer satisfaction is even more important for us and our cooperation with M-Tech provides a really good example how technologies could leverage the business of our customers "

About Aplana Software

Aplana Software (http://www.aplana.com) is a Moscow based steadily growing software services company, a member of Russia's top high-tech group - I.T.Co. Aplana provides a wide spectrum of high-quality software services for international customers with focus on development and integration of software systems according to customer requirements. Aplana is ISO9001:2000 certified company and strives for building win-win relationships with its customers and partners. Aplana customer base includes largest local and international companies such as GE Medical Systems, Procter&Gamble, TetraPak, Wrigley, Central Bank of Russia, Sberbank of Russia, YUKOS Oil Company and many others.

Aplana Software is a Microsoft Certified Partner and about 15% of its engineers are certified Microsoft technology specialists. 40% of Aplana's development portfolio are based on Microsoft technologies such as .NET, SQL, C# and VB. Aplana also experienced with Axapta solution and works closely with MBS Russia on customization and localization projects.

Aplana Software, I.T.Co Group
[email protected], http://www.aplana.com

Philadelphia office: 2600 Philmont Avenue, suite 305, Huntingdon Valley, PA 19006, U.S.A, Tel/Fax: (215) 947-4773

Moscow office: 84/32 Profsoyuznaya Str, Entrance 6, 117485, Moscow, Russia
Tel: +7 (095) 748 1345, 748 1346, Fax: +7 (095) 333 6412

PR and Marketing contact: Maria Dragan, PR&Marketing, Aplana Software, [email protected]

About Management Technologies (M-tech)

MTech, USA, is a leading market supplier of hotel service solutions. Since 1993 the company has developed, and installed Espresso, a quality management suite tailored to hotels. MTech has recently added hotSOS and PM-Works to its portfolio of solutions. Production, pre-installation, sales, marketing, and support are provided from the company's headquarters facility in Miami. For more information on the company, please visit www.m-tech.com

Management Technologies

14380 SW 139th Court, Miami, FL, 33186, USA
+1 (305) 256-0429 (1105)

Alberto Santana, Management Technologies, [email protected]