SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 22, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) -- Citadon, Inc., the leading provider of an online software solution for collaboration on the design, construction and operation of large, complex capital projects, today announced its new business strategy to target the power, oil and gas, process plant and transportation infrastructure markets while maintaining a focus on the general commercial building market.
Citadon Inc. was created in March 2001 through the merger of Bidcom, Inc. and Cephren, Inc., two leaders in online project collaboration for the engineering and construction industry. The merger has allowed Citadon to combine the experience, talent and patented technology from both companies. As a result, Citadon is uniquely positioned as the leading project collaboration solution provider for complex engineering projects.
With a heritage of innovation since 1997, Citadon is a pioneer in developing web-native applications that leverage the Internet by allowing geographically dispersed teams to communicate and collaborate via a secure shared project workspace. The combination of Citadon's five years of experience, blue-chip customer list and robust product offerings attracted recent funding from Warburg Pincus, GE Capital, ICG and Bechtel.
"Citadon has clearly emerged from the aftermath of the dotcom era as an industrial-strength solution for high-end engineering and construction projects," said Bruce Jenkins, industry analyst for Daratech (Cambridge, MA). "Citadon has been working with its major customers to develop its next-generation product on an enterprise technology platform, and will unveil a compelling new offering at the daratechPLANT2002 conference in Houston, January 28-31."
"Citadon supports its clients in managing complexity in their projects," explained Citadon President and Chief Executive Officer Bernard Fried. "Our services resolve one of the key points of pain in the engineering and construction process -- the traditional disconnect and often costly errors at the critical points of information handoff between all of the parties participating in large complex projects."
Citadon is committed to providing fully integrated online document management, business process automation and team collaboration application services to support global projects within the customer's enterprise, as well as across all of the different enterprises participating in the execution of capital works and infrastructure projects. Citadon is currently being used as a corporate standard for project collaboration by industry leaders and innovative owners such as GE Power Systems, Alcoa, Duke Energy, Bechtel and Fluor.
"Citadon has a proven track record of delivering reliable and scalable project collaboration services which support our execution of global infrastructure projects," said Fried. "Our customers derive benefits from direct savings in G&A costs, including decreased reprographics spending, reduced courier fees and less travel. Even greater savings come from streamlined business processes that eliminate delays and in many cases have contributed directly to early project completion, allowing customers to bring revenues on line sooner than planned."
In responding to the needs of large enterprise customers, Citadon has made a significant investment in creating an open systems architecture with extensive application programming interfaces (APIs). "Citadon's system architecture and APIs enable our customers to integrate with their preferred enterprise applications as well as legacy back office systems," explained Citadon Chief Technical Officer Ashok Segu. In order to support customers' integration needs, Citadon now offers systems integration consulting in addition to implementation consulting via their professional services group.
About Citadon Inc.
Citadon provides an online software solution for collaboration on the design, construction and operation of large, complex capital projects. Citadon's solution automates and streamlines business processes and communications within and across enterprises, resulting in reduced project risk, shorten project schedules and reduced overall project cost. Headquartered in San Francisco, Citadon's application services are currently being utilized in over 30 countries, by more than 30,000 active subscribers on projects with construction values in excess of $120 billion.
Current Citadon customers include owners such as Unocal, Constellation Power, Alcoa, Duke Energy and Immunex and engineering and construction firms such as Bechtel, Fluor, Odebrecht, URS/O'Brien Kreitzberg, AECOM, and GE Power Systems. Citadon is represented throughout Asia by IcFox International and in the UK by Bidcom Ltd. Citadon is privately held. For more information about Citadon, go to www.citadon.com or call (415) 882-1888.