Ecquaria brings innovation and creativity, putting forward thinking Esplanade on forefront of customer-oriented culture

Singapore (16 Oct 2002) -Ecquaria Limited (www.ecquaria.com), leader in enterprise software architecture, today announced launch of the first phase of Esplanade – Theatre on the Bay’s core entertainment infrastructure based on Web Services technology by Ecquaria. Ecquaria has been selected to develop and implement infrastructure for Esplanade’s customer-centric services. It is designed to be the key element in Esplanade’s mission to provide convenient and integrated customer experience. The project will be rolled out in various phases from October 2002 to mid-2003, with the initial phase focused on the design of the infrastructure and development of enhanced feature capabilities. When the project is fully implemented and all phases completed, the infrastructure will deliver information, interaction and transaction by leveraging advanced technologies for online ticket booking services, customer relationship management, content management, online merchandise purchase and payment. It will be able to develop, deploy and manage Web Services by creating a seamless environment for Internet services.

By mid-2003, Esplanade’s critical business processes will be automated to provide a seamless and integrated customer service process where a web-based, self-service means is available for Esplanade’s customers to interact and transact with Esplanade in real time. The customer experience is augmented when they are able to check for seat availability, purchase tickets, purchase Esplanade’s merchandise and sign up for personal services from Esplanade all in shorter time.

The front-end services will be linked to automated workflows that introduce new operational efficiencies, dramatically simplify ticket-booking transactions and improve response time while lowering operational cost.

The interactive infrastructure will leverage on the Ecquaria Service-Oriented Platform™ to streamline Esplanade’s ticketing, events, customer relationship management processes, bringing Esplanade to the forefront of service-oriented enterprise infrastructure among arts and entertainment organizations.

As a result, Esplanade’s services will provide a personalized environment that enhances the relationship between Esplanade and its customers, with a flexible, scalable solution capable of integrating easily to Esplanade’s existing technological infrastructure and meeting emerging needs.

Esplanade’s entertainment infrastructure will run on the Ecquaria Service-Oriented Platform™. It is a fully J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) enterprise infrastructure that supports Web Services standards UDDI, SOAP and WSDL. Ecquaria SOP™ will provide the Esplanade’s entertainment solution with ready, customizable features such as web services deployment wizard, electronic payment, security, user profile management, electronic data eXchange™, multi-channel delivery, system management console and Webflow™.

“The launch of our arts and entertainment infrastructure is an important step towards the realization of a service-oriented culture at Esplanade and ultimately, to provide the ‘Esplanade experience’ to all who walk through the doors of Esplanade,” said Benson Puah, CEO, Esplanade. “Ecquaria’s understanding of our business and technology needs, combined with their deep knowledge of service-oriented enterprise infrastructures, made them the perfect partners for us.”

“Our intent is to help our arts and entertainment customers capture the benefits of best practices and industry knowledge, helping them to pursue excellence and innovative business strategies,” said Paul Leong, Vice President of Business Development, Ecquaria. “Our collaboration with Esplanade is an important phase in the transformation of arts and entertainment organizations into customer-centric enterprises that are able to better respond and interact with their customers in today’s digital age.”

About Ecquaria Service-Oriented Platform™ (Ecquaria SOP™)
Ecquaria SOP™ is a fully J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) compliant software infrastructure. It is designed to enable governments and enterprises worldwide to deliver customer-centric electronic services to internal or external users over a variety of channels. Ecquaria SOP™ provides integrated Web Services development, management and deployment to rapidly implement scalable and cross-platform Web Services. Built on open standards, Ecquaria SOP™ supports Web Services standards UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration), SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) and WSDL (Web Services Description Language) to deliver significant business results. It enables enterprises to reduce their costs whilst increasing the level of service and quality of experience for their customers.

About Ecquaria Limited

Ecquaria delivers benefits of the Ecquaria Service-Oriented Platform™ to empower governments and enterprises worldwide to develop and deploy rich and diverse customer-centric services. Supported by a strong team of specialists in enterprise architectures, Ecquaria is committed to help clients succeed in increasing flexibility, agility and ultimately shortening the time to market. Ecquaria's key strength lies in EGovernment - enabling the business of Governments to provide highest levels of service satisfaction to public users. Some of Ecquaria's customers include Infocomm Development Authority (iDA) of Singapore, Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore, Ministry of Finance, The World Bank Group and MobileOne. Ecquaria has global presence and support in Singapore, China, Hong Kong, Brunei, Malaysia, Thailand, U.S. and Europe. More information about Ecquaria is available at www.ecquaria.com or email pr@ecquaria.com.