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Leading engineering and building industry technology providers to combine forces to create a visionary Internet platform for communication, collaboration and collaborative commerce
SAN FRANCISCO -- October 24, 2000 -- Bidcom Inc. and Cephren Inc., two leading providers of Internet services to the $3.9 trillion engineering and building industry, today announced that they have agreed in principle to merge the two companies, with the combined company to be renamed Citadon, Inc. (www.citadon.com/). Citadon will combine Bidcom's expertise in managing business processes with Cephren's expertise in project management and collaborative commerce applications to extend the technology frontier for the engineering and building industry and provide customers with the most complete suite of Internet services available today for this industry.
The combination of Bidcom and Cephren yields a company with more than 30,000 subscribers, and a global portfolio of 1,200 projects worth more than $110 billion dollars.
Citadon will be committed to providing its customers with an open technology platform that allows them to conduct and manage core business processes across all their projects and capital works programs, seamlessly collaborate and communicate, and capture and leverage knowledge across the extended enterprise. By uniting the industry's top software engineers behind an expert leadership team, Bidcom and Cephren believe Citadon will be well positioned to accelerate product development, increase customer and revenue growth, and work toward the creation of a standard platform for communication, collaboration and collaborative commerce within the engineering and building industry.
"The ultimate beneficiaries of this merger are the end users, who can now get all the services they need to manage their projects on one platform," said Kent Allen, senior e-commerce analyst with the Aberdeen Group. "With hundreds of e-Business technology suppliers offering point solutions to the engineering and building industry, many large companies within this sector have been waiting on the sidelines to see how the market for technology evolves. By bringing two very complementary technologies together in one integrated, scaleable solution that stands out from the competition, Citadon will give these companies a reason to get into the game."
Upon consummation of the merger, Doug Sabella, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of Bidcom, will become President and CEO of Citadon and Robert J. Majteles, CEO of Cephren, will become chairman of Citadon, which will be headquartered in San Francisco.
"There are tremendous synergies between the two companies products, revenues, assets, operating expenses and target markets," said Bidcom's President and CEO Doug Sabella, "and it made tremendous business sense for us to merge. At the end of the day, though, the most compelling reason behind the merger was customer need. Over the last 18 months we have seen the demand for our services progress from companies wanting to try us out on one project, to major engineering and construction firms like Fluor Daniel deciding to implement our technology across billions of dollars of new projects. The evolution of the marketplace has created the need for a new company that extends the technology frontier for the engineering and building industry. Citadon will be that company."
"The endorsement of this technology by leading customers like GE Power Systems, Bechtel Group, Fluor Daniel, Marriott and Hines clearly demonstrates the strength of our offering," added Cephren CEO Robert J. Majteles. "The emergence of Citadon will clearly benefit employees and investors, and provide customers with a clear choice for the future of their enterprise."
According to Hank Leingang, chief information officer of Bechtel Corporation, "Deploying Citadon's technology across our enterprise provides our projects a valuable tool. It enables us to reduce risk and better manage dispersed, inter-company teams across multiple locations. Citadon's technology will also help Bechtel better manage business processes and enforce proprietary work practices. And Citadon's scalable, open-technology platform will integrate with our diverse back-office systems. Using Citadon will allow us to make better, timelier decisions through better sharing of data on projects. Those capabilities help us reduce cycle time, simplify our activities and provide more value to our customers."
"The Internet has enormous potential to streamline project execution for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) industry," said Dan Stites, president of sales and marketing at Fluor Daniel, the engineering and construction unit of $12.4 billion Fluor Corporation (NYSE:FLR).
"Fluor Daniel standardized on Bidcom because we believe the EPC industry will benefit from a common platform to help manage complex business processes across a portfolio of global projects. We are extremely pleased with the merger of these two industry leaders, as the integration of the Cephren and Bidcom tools into one platform enhances the value of this platform and should accelerate the adoption of this technology within the EPC industry."
On a combined basis, Cephren and Bidcom have projects deployed in more than 30 countries. Citadon's customer base will include large owner/operators and leading engineering and construction firms including: Bechtel Group, Fluor Daniel, Marriott, American Airlines, DaimlerChrysler and GE Power Systems. Citadon will offer the following products:
- Citadon ProjectNet-- A comprehensive collaboration, business process and document management solution;
- Citadon ProjectNet LT -- Collaboration and document management for short-duration, high-intensity, multi-discipline projects -- currently supported in six languages;
- Citadon ProjectFirst -- An OEM solution for branded document management and collaboration;
- Citadon MarketNet -- A complete solution for expediting and managing collaborative commerce, from invitations to bid and requests for quotes through purchase orders;
- Citadon PrintNet -- A solution for expediting and managing the printing of project documents through a network of reprographic shops.
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.
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