Release Details

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 9, 2003-- Aspen Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: AZPN) today outlined its strategy for delivering modular software solutions to the emerging enterprise operations management (EOM) market. In a presentation to attendees of its Annual Shareholder Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts this afternoon, the company will summarize several key market drivers that are leading process manufacturers to implement EOM solutions to improve their operational performance. The presentation will be webcast live on AspenTech's website beginning at 3:00 p.m. ET.

"Over the past two decades, process manufacturers have achieved productivity improvement by standardizing on integrated plant hardware and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems," said David McQuillin, President and CEO of AspenTech. "With the benefits of these implementations largely realized and with growing pressures on operating profitability, companies are now focusing on improving their operational performance by standardizing on integrated software solutions to manage and optimize their day-to-day operations. These initiatives are fueling the emergence of a new market space called enterprise operations management."

The EOM market has developed as the process industries have adopted operational excellence programs designed to continuously improve the research and development, engineering, manufacturing and supply chain processes that underpin their operations. In recent years these initiatives have expanded from individual departments and plants to become strategic programs designed to achieve operating efficiency and flexibility across the entire enterprise.

The emergence of the EOM market is being accelerated by several industry trends including the need to improve operational visibility and flexibility in an increasingly complex environment, the transition to demand-driven supply chains, a renewed emphasis on product innovation, and the desire of CIOs to lower the cost of ownership of their IT systems.

"AspenTech has developed a range of integrated EOM solutions that enable process manufacturers to simulate and optimize their global operations so they can make more profitable decisions," said McQuillin. "With their unique ability to model and predict the future financial impact of operational decisions, these solutions will allow companies to maximize capital efficiency, increase operating margins and improve operational flexibility. The creation of these new solutions is an important element of our long-term growth strategy, providing our customers with a path to migrate from individual software products to integrated enterprise solutions tailored to their industry."

AspenTech's EOM solutions are based on its best-of-breed applications for engineering, manufacturing and supply chain management that are already used by tens of thousands of users to model and optimize specific aspects of the enterprise. These applications will continue to be regularly updated, and are also being complemented by new products such as Aspen RefSYS(TM) for refinery-wide modeling and Aspen Apollo(TM) for production control in polymers.

AspenTech's strategy is to develop a suite of modular vertical EOM solutions to address the major challenges of each segment of the process industries. To enable the company's best-of-breed applications to be leveraged as part of these solutions, AspenTech has developed the new Operations Manager suite of software. The products in the Operations Manager suite provide a comprehensive range of capabilities required by enterprise-level solutions, including role-based visualization, performance scorecarding, event management, look-forward analytics and integration infrastructure based on the Aspen Enterprise Platform, which is in use at more than 75 plants worldwide. The Operations Manager suite allows customers to build on their investment in AspenTech and third-party applications to implement scalable EOM solutions that are tailored to their industry. These solutions solve a well-defined array of operational problems specific to each industry and provide active visibility into how manufacturing and supply chain assets are performing.

About AspenTech

Aspen Technology, Inc. provides industry-leading software and implementation services that enable process companies to increase efficiency and profitability. AspenTech's engineering product line is used to design and improve plants and processes, maximizing returns throughout an asset's operating life. Its manufacturing/supply chain product line allows companies to increase margins in their plants and supply chains, by managing customer demand, optimizing production, and streamlining the delivery of finished products. These two offerings are combined to create solutions for enterprise operations management (EOM), integrated enterprise-wide systems that provide process manufacturers with the capability to dramatically improve their operating performance. Over 1,500 leading companies already rely on AspenTech's software, including Aventis, Bayer, BASF, BP, ChevronTexaco, Dow Chemical, DuPont, ExxonMobil, Fluor, Foster Wheeler, GlaxoSmithKline, Shell, and Total. For more information, visit www.aspentech.com.

Paragraphs 2 and 5 of this press release contain forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. For this purpose, any statement using the term "will," "should," "could," "anticipates," "believes" or a comparable term is a forward-looking statement. Actual results may vary significantly from AspenTech's expectations based on a number of risks and uncertainties, including: AspenTech's lengthy sales cycle which makes it difficult to predict quarterly operating results; fluctuations in AspenTech's quarterly operating results; AspenTech's dependence on customers in cyclical industries; adverse global economic conditions; AspenTech's ability to raise additional capital as required; the FTC's investigation of the Hyprotech acquisition; the outcome of AspenTech's restructuring plans; intense competition; AspenTech's need to develop and market products successfully; and other risk factors described from time to time in AspenTech's periodic reports and registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. AspenTech cannot guarantee any future results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements. Moreover, neither AspenTech nor anyone else assumes responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of any forward-looking statements. AspenTech undertakes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date of this press release.

AspenTech and the aspen leaf logo are trademarks of Aspen Technology, Inc., Cambridge, Mass.

CONTACT: Aspen Technology, Inc.
For Media:
Peter Watt, +44 1223 819-752
peter.watt@aspentech.com

Marie Telepneff, 617-949-1324
marie.telepneff@aspentech.com

For Investors:
Joshua Young, 617-949-1274
joshua.young@aspentech.com