The Vantive Corporation Announces Research Agent and Agreement with
Inference Corp. 

Vantive to Offer Advanced Problem-Solving Help Using CBR Express Products

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA, August 23, 1993 -- The Vantive Corporation, formerly
ProActive Software, Inc., today announced a new version of its Research
Agent that will offer customers Inference Corporation's CBR Express family
of Case-Based Retrieval products, for advanced problem-solving help. The
company also announced a strategic marketing and reseller agreement with
Inference Corp. of El Segundo, CA.

The Vantive Corporation develops and markets the Vantive System, a family
of client/server applications that span the enterprise: customer support
and help desk, quality assurance and development, sales and marketing. The
Vantive System enables companies to deliver superior service, product
quality and customer satisfaction. Inference Corporation is a leading
supplier of software application development tools and services that help
people work smarter corporate-wide. Vantive will offer users the option of
purchasing the CBR Express product family as a component of the Research
Agent, which comes with the Vantive System.

John Luongo, Vantive President and Chief Executive Officer, commented,
"Vantive's approach to software solutions is to provide customers with the
broadest range of options and capabilities that accommodate particular
business needs. Inference offers powerful Case-Based Retrieval technology
that has proven to be a tremendous cost-saver and quality enhancement in
many customer service and help desk applications."

Peter Tierney, Inference President and Chief Executive Officer, said, "This
announcement further reinforces the fact that Inference's Case-Based
Retrieval technology is becoming the standard problem-resolution
technology in the customer service industry. We are excited about
Vantive's use of Inference's CBR technology and products, and see our
relationship as an opportunity to expand the market for powerful help desk
solutions." 

Research Agent and CBR Express

Scheduled for availability in the fourth quarter of 1993, the Research
Agent is part of the core functionality available in all Vantive
applications. It is a unique new database search capability that offers
customers three levels of problem-solving help, and enables users to
manage the simplest to the most complex problem-resolution environments.
The current version of the Research Agent offers basic keyword and pattern
matching capabilities. The new version of the Research Agent will offer
full text search and retrieval for more comprehensive problem-solving, as
well as Inference's Case-Based Retrieval capability.

CBR, as commercially implemented in the CBR Express product family, allows
Vantive users to create, manage and access repositories of unstructured
"case" information using natural language and a graphical,
fill-in-the-form user interface. The term "case" refers to a case study or
past business experience. CBR Express products provide intelligently
guided access to an evolving case base of experience, such as prior
customer problems with known solutions. The user interface accepts user
input in free-form natural language, proposes questions to help the caller
clarify their situation and identifies those previously handled cases that
might resolve the caller's problem.

Vantive is developing an interface from the Vantive System to Inference's
CasePoint, a product in the CBR Express product family. CasePoint provides
highspeed, read-only access to case bases developed with CBR Express.
Information from the current Vantive application screen is passed to
CasePoint, and the title of the matching case is returned. CasePoint
permits the cost-effective distribution of case bases on standard magnetic
media, can be embedded in products' operating software to create "smart"
products, and puts diagnostic and problem-solving capabilities on the
desktops of users to speed up the resolution of problems and general
inquiries. 

Availability

Inference Corporation's CBR Express Case-Based Retrieval products will be
available as an option to the Vantive System in the fourth quarter of
1993. 

Inference Corp.

Inference Corp., headquartered in El Segundo, CA, is a leading supplier of
software application development tools and services that help people work
smarter corporate-wide. Inference's product family includes
ART-Enterprise, the industry's first object-oriented, multiplatform tool
for building enterprise-wide client/server computing applications, CBR
Express for easy, fast development of help desk applications by end users
and for general case base authoring, CasePoint for building "smart"
products and for wide-scale distribution of case-based knowledge.
Inference Corporation has offices through the United States, Europe and
the Pacific Rim. 

The Vantive Corporation

Vantive is a leading supplier of integrated, client/server applications
that span the enterprise: customer support and help desk, quality
assurance and product development, sales and marketing. Vantive's products
give companies a competitive edge by delivering superior products and
total customer satisfaction.

The Vantive System is based on a high performance client/server
architecture, is easy to customize, highly portable and scalable across
PC, Macintosh, and UNIX platforms, and integrates easily with other
applications. Products are cross-industry and sold to the financial,
telecommunications, utility, medical/pharmaceutical, and technology
companies through direct, reseller and OEM sales channels.

The Vantive Corp
1890 N. Shoreline Blvd, Mountain View, CA 94043
415-691-1500,  fax 415-691-1515

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