EDMONTON, ALBERTA, Feb. 18, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- Upside Software Inc., an integrated enterprise contract management software provider, announced today the purchase of a divisional license of UpsideContract by Microsoft Corp.
Contract Management is continuing to become an area of significant focus for many organizations, which has resulted in an increased demand for solid contract management software. Upside Software is a leader in this market, which is estimated by many analysts to exceed $5B USD by 2007. UpsideContract provides full life-cycle contract management functionality including collaborative contract creation and negotiation, performance, compliance and risk management, event management, and amendment and renewal processing.
"UpsideContract as well as all of our products are developed on the robust and scalable Microsoft based architecture, including the powerful and interoperable .NET platform, running on SQL Server 2000. We are proud to have been selected by the world's largest software provider as their solution of choice for managing their Home and Entertainment contracts globally" said Ashif Mawji, Upside Software Inc. CEO. He added, "By adding Microsoft to our continually growing and impressive list of industry leaders, we strengthen our company and products and are able to offer increased value to our customers."
According to Aberdeen Group's Tim Minahan, Aberdeen estimates that ineffective control and management of supplier contracts cost businesses $153 billion per year in missed savings opportunities. As organizations understand the incredible return on investment (ROI) resulting from the use of contract management software, its popularity will increase even more. Another leading analyst, Gartner Group, predicts that by year end 2008, in 80 percent of enterprises, the cost of contract management will have doubled from the 2002 costs of 2 percent to 4 percent of SGA.
About Upside Software Inc.
Upside Software provides the leading Contract Management Software solution in the market -- UpsideContract -- as well as other integrated business solutions to handle Sourcing & Procurement, Invoice and Billing Management, and Project & Resource Management. Upside Software's products address the needs of Enterprise (e.g. Fortune 500, Global 2000), Public sector (Federal, State/Provincial, Municipal and Health Care) and Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sector customers. Upside Software's customers realize significant cost savings and improve customer and supplier relationships. The company's solutions are delivered to customers in as little as 3 days and provide a full return-on-investment (ROI) in much less than one year. Upside Software is a profitable, growing company with a very advanced, yet mature, and comprehensive product suite. The company has extensive experience delivering real value to customers of every size and in most industry verticals. For more information about Upside Software and its suite of business solutions, visit the company's Web site at www.upsidesoft.com or one of its product sites: http://www.upsidecontract.com/, http://www.upsidecontractlite.com/, http://www.upsiderfx.com/, http://www.upsidebilling.com/, http://www.upsidepmo.com/.