Plateau Achieves Record Results for First Half of Fiscal 2009

ARLINGTON, VA -- (Marketwire) -- 10/13/09 -- Plateau Systems, a leading provider of enterprise-class SaaS solutions for talent management, today announced that the company has achieved record results for its fiscal first half of 2009, which ended August 31, 2009. During this period, Plateau's revenue mix continued to shift with SaaS bookings now comprising more than 55 percent of Plateau's total platform bookings. Underscoring this trend, more than 3 million Plateau users are now leveraging Plateau's OnDemand offerings to drive their talent management initiatives forward. International bookings increased 60 percent and represented almost 30 percent of Plateau's total software bookings in the year's first half. The company is on track to grow annualized software bookings by 25 percent year over year, and expects to sustain its EBITDA profit margin of more than 15 percent through the remainder of the fiscal year.

The company experienced significant growth across the broader talent management market, with annualized bookings increasing more than 200 percent across its performance management, career and succession planning and compensation management product lines. Plateau added more than 600,000 new users in the first half of 2009, bringing the total number of licensed Plateau users across all product lines and solutions sets to more than 11 million. On the product front, Plateau outperformed the market, delivering two significant talent management solutions in the first half of the year:

Plateau Talent Management 6.1, an enterprise class, on-demand application comprised of Plateau Learning, Plateau Performance, Plateau Compensation and Plateau Career and Succession Planning was announced in June; followed by the delivery last month of Plateau Talent Gateway, the industry's first fully integrated set of flexible, portable web-based communication, social, and knowledge-sharing tools designed to make talent management more accessible and available across the enterprise.

"We've reached an inflection point in the evolution of talent management solutions," said Paul Sparta, Chairman and CEO of Plateau Systems. "Integrated talent management suites have arrived. Eighteen months ago, people were talking about them. Now, they're buying them. In 2008, roughly 17 percent of our deals involved the purchase of two or more talent management modules at the point of initial purchase. Today, the percentage of customers initially buying more than one module of Plateau's integrated talent management suite has more than doubled to north of 40 percent. Right now, Plateau is setting the standard for integrated talent management and preparing for significant growth in 2010 as organizations continue to recognize the efficiencies, cost benefits and business value integrated talent management suites provide."

iContent

With more and more organizations looking to offload the administrative burden associated with content management, hosting, testing and validation, Plateau's iContent solution continues to be one of the company's most popular offerings. iContent revenues were up 50 percent year over year in the first half, with 22 new customers choosing to deploy the solution. This fully managed content solution remains the industry's first and only Content-as-a-Service (CaaS) solution to provide a single point of procurement, centralized management, hosting for all third-party and in-house content and an all-inclusive service-level guarantee. Today, iContent has over 1.4 million users and is delivering e-learning content globally across 154 countries.

New and Notable Customers

In the first half of 2009, leading organizations including Sabre Holdings, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and National Grid USA, as well as Federal Law Enforcement Training Command and several other government organizations and agencies, selected Plateau's talent management solutions to support their internal and/or external learning, training, performance, compensation and career and succession management initiatives.

Market Leadership and Customer Success

During the first half of 2009, Plateau continued to earn recognition and accolades for vision, innovation leadership and customer satisfaction and success. In September, the company was recognized as a Leader in Gartner's 2009 Magic Quadrant for Corporate Learning Systems (CLS)(1), marking the seventh consecutive time the company has achieved this distinction since 2003. In addition to recognizing Plateau as an innovator and market leader in several learning and talent management reports over the past six months, Bersin & Associates recently highlighted Plateau's successful market evolution and well-executed corporate strategy in a research bulletin titled, " Plateau Systems: Evolution of an Enterprise Talent Management Software Company."(2)

International Operations

Outside of North America, Plateau's software bookings represented almost 30 percent of the company's overall revenues for the first half of 2009 as the company continued to expand its international presence in Europe, the Middle East and Africa and Asia-Pacific regions. In addition to signing a number of new channel partners in EMEA and Asia-Pacific in the first half of the year, Plateau hired seasoned sales and sales management executives to oversee and execute the company's international growth strategy and drive direct, indirect and channel sales across the globe. Heath Williams joined Plateau in March as VP of international sales and has been responsible for managing and directing the company's international growth, channel strategy and sales initiatives. During the first half of the year, Plateau added several new international customers and continued to grow its international installed base with several existing customers expanding their investments in Plateau's talent management solutions. In the second half of 2009, the company will continue to invest in its international growth and global expansion and focus on optimizing sales execution across the organization.

About Plateau

Plateau led the charge in transforming corporate workforces in the mid-'90s with its award-winning learning management system (LMS) platform, which streamlined the management and delivery of learning and training across some of the world's most respected organizations, including General Electric, the United States Air Force and Capital One Services. Plateau expanded its LMS platform, and in early 2000 delivered the industry's first fully integrated, Java-based talent management platform, which allowed organizations to link learning and training with employee performance to ensure that employee goals aligned with corporate objectives. Today, organizations around the world rely on Plateau's enterprise-class SaaS solutions to drive innovation, facilitate collaboration and connect people in ways that support the organization's most critical business objectives. Customers and industry analysts continue to recognize Plateau as a customer satisfaction leader and for its continued leadership, vision and technology innovation. Plateau is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia and has offices across the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit www.Plateau.com.

(1) Gartner, "Magic Quadrant for Corporate Learning Systems," Carol Rozwell, September 10, 2008.

(2) Bersin & Associates, "Plateau Systems: Evolution of an Enterprise Talent Management Software Company," September 2009.

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