ePartners Offers Smart Alternatives For Companies Currently Running Or Evaluating Tier One Solutions

Microsoft’s 2004 Global Partner of the Year Emphasizes ROI and TCO of Microsoft Business Solutions

SEATTLE, WA: JUNE 15, 2005 — ePartners (www.epartnersolutions.com), a leading global Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) consultancy, is strengthening its focus on upper mid market and enterprise accounts. ePartners is advocating lower licensing fees, implementation costs, customization charges and maintenance expenses of MBS compared with traditional enterprise applications. ePartners has successfully migrated over 20 leading companies away from Tier One solutions.

“Many of our current clients have made the switch from traditional enterprise applications to Microsoft Business Solutions after weighing functionality and user adoption against projected TCO (total cost of ownership),” says Dan Duffy, President and CEO of ePartners. “Not only are the licensing fees more affordable, but the inherent simplicity of an MBS solution helps contain implementation, customization and maintenance costs.”

Forgent Networks, Southern Star Concrete and Gibson Guitars have all made the switch from traditional enterprise applications to MBS, with the guidance and help of ePartners. Hundreds of other companies such as EarthLink and the American Stock Exchange are also benefiting from choosing MBS over tier-one solutions.

Michael Rondini, who is responsible for financial operations at Forgent Networks, thought that a simple maintenance upgrade of their existing tier-one application would be straightforward. “We thought it would be a fairly simple project,” says Rondini. “But it turned out that a simple change – much less the full upgrade – would cost $50,000 to $60,000. We found that the cost of the tier-one upgrade would be more than installing a new (MBS) system,” he explains. “In fact, MBS gave us the functionality that we needed at half the cost.”

Citing studies from Nucleus Research, an independent research and advisory firm specializing in determining ROI, ePartners has credible statistics to support their latest effort. Nucleus analyzed a real world environment to illustrate the ROI associated with an MBS implementation and found that the annual ROI was 375 percent, with a payback period of .27 years.* According to Nucleus Research ROI Scores, MBS solutions rank high in business impact, with such benefits as “productivity enhancements that resulted in reduced or redeployed staff, reduced IT costs from replacing outdated or expensive systems, improved visibility into operations that enabled organizations to more easily identify and solve business problems and issues.”

ePartners is a leading MBS provider and information technology services consultancy with 23 offices in North America and London. More than 300 leading companies spanning 45 industries turned to ePartners last year for aligning business and IT strategies, improving business processes and deploying and supporting solutions that accelerate business results.

For more information about ePartners, visit www.epartnersolutions.com or call 888-883-9797.

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About ePartners, Inc.

After more than a decade of arming its customers with a competitive advantage, ePartners has established itself as the leading global Microsoft Business Solutions consultancy in the world. From aligning their clients’ business and IT strategies; to improving business processes; and deploying and supporting solutions that accelerate business results, no other Microsoft Business Solutions partner offers more comprehensive information technology solutions and services than ePartners. Last year alone, more than 300 leading companies spanning 45 industries turned to ePartners for strategic business solutions and consulting services. ePartners is backed by Texas Growth Fund, Austin Ventures, Capital Resource Partners, Liberty Mutual, Mobius Venture Capital, Madrona Venture Group, Rustic Canyon Partners and Charterhouse Group. www.epartnersolutions.com.

*Nucleus Research, ROI Case Study: Microsoft Business Solutions-Solomon Orion Consulting, Calculating the ROI Summary chart, pg. 4, October, 2004.

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