IBM Helps Electronic Payment Leader ACI Worldwide Unify Communications, Integrate Global Workforce With Client Base

Real-Time Connection and Instant Business Dashboard Help Synchronize Global Operations

ACI Worldwide, Inc. (NASDAQ: ACIW), a leading international provider of electronic payment software, has signed a multi-million dollar agreement with IBM (NYSE: IBM) for software and services to integrate its global workforce and client base through unified communications and collaboration technologies.

A range of IBM software and services will deliver a virtually-connected work environment to synchronize online activities for more than 2,000 ACI Worldwide employees and clients in 88 countries.

As electronic payment volumes grow, ACI products are demanded by more customers in increasingly connected markets. ACI Worldwide supports more than $70 billion consumer transactions per year. On an average day, ACI software manages more than $5 trillion in wholesale payments. To meet the challenges associated with growth, ACI selected a range of collaboration, unified communications and social software to unify and virtualize communications among its distributed work force and customers. An integrated operation will be designed to overcome time differences and geographical distances in a global business environment.

"The ability to collaborate in all dimensions is key to extending our industry leading position around the world," said Dave McCann, chief information officer at ACI. "Business collaboration needs to more accurately reflect the way people naturally prefer to interact. This IBM solution is designed to accelerate individual and collective worker productivity by 50 percent or more by breaking down barriers of time, space and departmental silos."

"IBM's unique approach to Unified Communications provides easy and intuitive access to communications and collaboration services across a broad spectrum of environments, making it easier to find, reach and collaborate with your customers and employees," said Bruce Morse, vice president for IBM Unified Communications and Collaboration. "Lotus Sametime is a unified communications platform built on open standards allowing easy integration with a broad range of IT vendor and IBM products such as Lotus Connections, Lotus Quickr, WebSphere Portal and Lotus ActiveInsight as well as ACI's existing environment to help them work seamlessly and efficiently with their employees and customers."

Cited by Gartner as a current Magic Quadrant leader in Unified Communications for offering integrated and comprehensive solutions, IBM is serving new clients such as ACI and expanding into its existing client base. With market forces including the proliferation of communications methods and convergence of all communications on IP networks and open-software platforms, IBM helps clients improve business operations and processes through a Unified Communications and Collaboration portfolio of software and services.

ACI will use the following IBM software:

• Lotus Sametime, for unified communications including instant messaging and Web conferencing.

• Lotus Connections, for enterprise social networking and expert community-building.

• Lotus Quickr, for team collaboration and enhanced document sharing.

• Lotus ActiveInsight, a management dashboard with a view of real-time business metrics, which defines and communicates business goals. It will integrate with business intelligence systems; introduce group scorecards; deploy applications on new clients; and update three-dimensional charting support.

• IBM WebSphere Portal, which delivers a Web 2.0 business mashup framework and consistent user experience for ACI employees and customers on a global basis.

• IBM's OmniFind search tool, to help employees and customers find, analyze and get the most out of their information, regardless of where it is stored.

• The visual modeling capabilities of IBM Rational Data Architect, Rational Software Modeler and Rational Software Architect will be used to simplify the design of future applications.

For more information, visit http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/unified-communications.