Strategic win marks Ecquaria's major foray into ASEAN market, strengthening its leadership in powering eGovernment initiatives

Singapore (10 Mar 2005) - Ecquaria Technologies Limited ( www.ecquaria.com), leader in enterprise infrastructure and solutions and an associate company of leading pan-Asian IT service provider, Frontline Technologies Corporation Limited, today announced that it has been awarded a S$4.7 million contract to build an integrated Service Portal for the Ministry of Communications of Brunei Darussalam. This is yet another strategic and significant overseas government win for the homegrown company.

In support of the Brunei Government's plan to transform the delivery of public services to citizens, the Ministry of Communications (MinCom) selected Ecquaria to be a partner in its efforts to spearhead the country's eGovernment initiatives. Ecquaria is part of a consortium commissioned by MinCom to design and deploy a centralized eGovernment platform that the Government agencies and their appointed vendors could develop on and roll out robust Web Services rapidly, efficiently and securely for use by the public.

Under the service agreement, Ecquaria's flagship enterprise infrastructure software, Ecquaria Service-Oriented Platform™ (Ecquaria SOP™) will be used to power MinCom's ministry-wide intranet, an integrated Service Portal that will host public information of all the agencies of MinCom. In addition, a new electronic billing system and other eServices will be developed for the Portal using Ecquaria SOP™.

The new portal solution with built-in single sign-on authentication features represents the Brunei Government's customer-centric approach to eServices delivery. It is specifically designed to address the security and availability needs of MinCom's Data Centre and Disaster Recovery Centres in addition to streamlining information and eServices catered to the different needs of its users - internal users as well as citizens and businesses. 

"We are pleased to team up with Ecquaria who clearly demonstrated to us their experience, capabilities and proven track record for other governments," said Mr Ang Kian Guan, Director of IT, Research & Development, Ministry of Communications, Brunei Darussalam.  "We look forward to working with Ecquaria on harnessing the power of new technologies to meet the demand of citizens and businesses. Through the new single electronic gateway, we can now facilitate a higher level of communication and collaboration among geographically dispersed agencies as well as with the public users."

Ecquaria's open and extensible process-driven infrastructure will thus enable the Brunei Government to build integrated services across multiple agencies easily and efficiently - and at the same time, provide a secure environment to ensure a seamless and concurrent development of eServices by MinCom's different ministries, without affecting the Government's ongoing operations.


Leadership in eGovernment
Buoyed by its success at home in architecting and implementing two key large-scale electronic public services projects, notably, the Public Service Infrastructure (PSi)1 and Online Application for Integrated Services (OASIS)2 under the Singapore government's eGovernment Action Plans I and II (eGAP I and II) respectively, Ecquaria is aggressively taking its eGovernment experience and expertise overseas.

"Today's win is a strong endorsement that further bolsters our reputation as a local software company expanding into regional and international markets. Ecquaria SOP™ is a tried and tested platform that has been successfully deployed in Governments. We bring to Brunei our proven track record and experience we have accumulated in working on eGovernment projects for Governments such as Singapore, Thailand and Mexico," said Dr Foong Wai Keong, President and CEO of Ecquaria.  

"With our successes in implementing large-scale eGovernment projects, we are proud and delighted to partner with the Brunei Government in extending our expertise to help propel it's national efforts in transforming itself to become a leading networked government in the world." Dr Foong added. In conjunction with the award announcement, Ecquaria announces its plans to expand its market focus in ASEAN by strengthening its leadership in eGovernment initiatives.

"We see growing opportunities from Governments in ASEAN who are increasingly looking to help individuals and businesses simplify the use of public services. Southeast Asia is on a growth curve and new opportunities are sprouting for Singapore's companies. Given that more than 70 per cent of our projects are eGovernment in focus, we believe Ecquaria is well positioned to capitalize on the niche eGovernment market opportunities the region offers," said Dr Foong.

According to a September 2004 report in Beyond Singapore-Southeast Asia, a publication by International Enterprise Singapore, outlook in ASEAN is bright with an expected GDP growth of 5.2 per cent this year. For Brunei, growth is expected to be within the range of 4 per cent to 5.5 percent.

In keeping with Brunei Darussalam's aim to establishing itself as the Cyber hub of the region as well as to be in line with the call for greater e-commerce collaboration within regional groupings such as the Asia Pacific Economic Council (APEC) and the ASEAN Government, the country has placed a determined emphasis on the development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Under the Eighth National Development Plan (NDP)3 that runs from 2001 to 2005, the Government has earmarked S$1 billion for the ICT sector.

The Singapore-based company recently started venturing into other ASEAN counties such as Thailand and the Philippines. In addition, it is addressing the ASEAN market opportunity actively through partners and value-added resellers. The organization is working with an elite group of partners with domain expertise that provide marketing, implementation and services behind Ecquaria's Service-Oriented Platform™ offerings.

In December 2002, the company's flagship product, Ecquaria Service-Oriented Platform™ was endorsed by the ASEAN e-Task Force as the foundation platform to build ASEAN Service Access Platform (ASAP), an open collaborative infrastructure platform to foster electronic commerce growth, facilitate interconnectivity and technical interoperability amongst ASEAN countries and globally. Through ASAP, government agencies, commercial enterprises and consumers are able to obtain "one-stop" customer-centric services that are personalized to them and built through syndicating supporting services.


Notes to Editor:
1The Public Services Infrastructure (PSi) was launched in 2001 under the Singapore government's e-Government Action Plan I (eGAP I). It serves as the foundation for Singapore's nationwide e-Government initiatives, enabling delivery of government e-Services to citizens and businesses. 2 Online Application System for Integrated Services (OASIS) is the first key project under the Singapore government's S$1.3 billion e-Government Action Plan II (eGAP II) to deliver one-stop, integrated services to better meet the needs of citizens and businesses through multi-agency collaboration and efficient delivery of customer-centric services. Ecquaria was awarded the project that helped the Ministry of Trade and Industry successfully launch the Online Business Licensing Service, providing businesses a one-stop convenience to apply for licenses and permits online.

3 Statistics are taken from "The Borneo Bulletin - Brunei Yearbook 2004" published by Forward Media Sdn Bhd and Brunei Press Sdn Bhd.

About Ecquaria Technologies
Ecquaria is a leading enterprise business platform provider and an associate company of Frontline Technologies Corporation Limited. Unique in the industry, Ecquaria has pioneered a simple and effective way to provide software integration and new application development all in one single, integrated enterprise business platform. Based on a service-oriented model and Business Performance Management capabilities, the Ecquaria Service-Oriented Platform™ (Ecquaria SOP™) offers a comprehensive business platform to deliver a secure, scalable and reliable process-driven infrastructure for all the enterprise's applications. Ecquaria strives to help customers put in place business processes that are integrated end-to-end across the enterprise and with key partners, vendors and customers.

These processes can be reviewed easily by managers, who can respond with flexibility and speed. Offering enterprise-class capabilities, Ecquaria SOP™ enables the enterprise to automate its business processes and provide an efficiently integrated information flow throughout the organization. While providing critical and complete information across the enterprise, Ecquaria SOP™ supports key business objectives to help the enterprise to manage all aspects of its business. Ecquaria is established with offices in Singapore, China, Mexico and U.S. with an expanding network of global partners in ASEAN, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Africa to support the activities of customers worldwide. More information is available at http://www.ecquaria.com.

About Frontline Technologies Corporation Ltd
Frontline Technologies Corporation Ltd is a leading provider of end-to-end IT services that comprise IT consulting, IT infrastructure, systems integration and outsourcing. Established in 1993, we have the experience and a strong regional pool of over 2,700 professionals to service the needs of multinational businesses across a broad spectrum of sectors that include financial services, manufacturing, transportation and logistics, healthcare, education and the public sector. Our strong presence in over 50 cities in Asia - China, India, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand - enables us to better respond to our clients' unique challenges and opportunities.

Frontline has been listed on the Main board of the Singapore Exchange since 2001 and is currently ranked in the top 5% of the Corporate Transparency Index (CTI) in Singapore (Source: Business Times 2004). For more information, please visit www.frontline.com.sg.