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Bentley Technologies Combine To Deliver a Comprehensive Online Platform for Engineering, Construction and Operations

Washington, DC--A/E/C SYSTEMS, June 5, 2000--Bentley Systems, Incorporated today launched Viecon.com, the company's project extranet offering. Viecon.com, the first part of the Viecon(TM) initiative unveiled by the company last month, is designed to maximize the effectiveness of Engineering, Construction and Operations (E/C/O) networks by allowing members of project teams to create, communicate and collaborate efficiently over the Internet.

Unlike other project extranets, Viecon.com benefits from Bentley's robust collaboration, synchronization and integration technologies that E/C/O leaders have been relying on for years.

"We are extremely excited about bringing this comprehensive solution to market," commented Keith Bentley, CEO and technology visionary of Bentley. "As expectations for speed and accuracy increase, E/C/O professionals require an Internet solution that is more than a repository for shared access to project information. Viecon.com goes further, creating an ideal environment to integrate otherwise incongruous tools, synchronize data and track team member responsibility."

In its capacity as the "situation room" for the project, Viecon.com vastly improves the coordination of interrelated efforts. Viecon.com facilitates and records the communications between and among owners, design teams, contractors, suppliers and other E/C/O project participants. It can also be used as a secure and convenient way to share selected files between team members.

"Radically more efficient creation and operation of built assets is the promise of the new E/C/O network-enabling technology being pioneered by Bentley with its Viecon initiative," said Bruce Jenkins, executive vice president of Daratech, Inc. (Cambridge, MA). "Driven by these savings, which we estimate could top $400 billion in 2000 alone, Daratech projects spending on E/C/O network technology will pass $1 billion by 2004."

Comprehensive Engineering "Back Office" Technology Is Imperative

The release announcement was made prior to the A/E/C Systems trade show and conference in Washington, D.C., where Bentley is demonstrating how Viecon.com combined with Bentley's ProjectBank(TM) and ProjectWise(R) addresses the complex issues facing architects, engineers, contractors, owners and operators of constructed assets.

Bentley's award-winning ProjectBank is the state-of-the-art for design collaboration. ProjectBank manages information in computer-aided design (CAD) files at the component level, rather than as a "black box" like traditional document management systems. That means that all design changes can be tracked by component, by individual, and even that multiple people can be working on the same file at the same time. For teams attempting to work across a project extranet, the need for a comprehensive "back office" system to manage design and engineering work-in-progress is essential for a successful project.

Bentley's ProjectWise extends ProjectBank to manage all of the other types of documents involved in design and engineering workflows (e.g. word processing files, spreadsheets, text files, etc.). ProjectWise integrates with the design and office automation applications, and provides direct access to the main repositories for the high volume of design-application data. On demand, or automatically at significant project milestones, ProjectWise can publish and synchronize the appropriate subset of design information directly to the Viecon.com shared site. This combination of comprehensive workgroup information management tools integrated with dead-simple Web access environment can revolutionize project throughput.

"If a project extranet for E/C/O does not synchronize data, provide for version control, activity logging, and content logging, project teams might as well just e-mail information back and forth," explained Yoav Etiel, Bentley's Senior Vice President of Marketing. "Worse, without an engineering information management solution like ProjectWise, a user may actually use the Internet and a project extranet to distribute the wrong information to more people faster."

Beginning immediately, and running through October 1st, Bentley SELECT(R) subscribers are able to register projects and use Viecon.com for up to three months free-of-charge. Once a project has been created, the SELECT project sponsor can invite anyone they choose into the project team. Availability for non-SELECT Subscribers is expected on or before July 1. To register a project, or for additional information about Viecon.com, please visit http://www.viecon.com.

Bentley's Viecon comprehensive, integrated and universal initiative includes three key elements: Viecon.com; Viecon Licensing, Bentley technologies licensed over the Internet on a by-person, by-project, by-month basis; and Viecon Platforms, a local installation of Viecon technology for organizations who wish to create their own "private" project extranets and networks behind their own firewall.