NEWS ROOM

Thunderhead Positioned as Leader in Celent Report on Document Automation for Insurers

Top analyst firm highlights global software vendor's US insurance customer base and technology innovation

Irvine, California, USA - 10 March, 2008

Thunderhead, the leading provider of enterprise communications solutions, has been named in a recent Celent report, “Document Automation Solution Vendors for Insurers 2007,” as one of the industry's leading vendors. The report, which profiles the US operations of several document automation vendors, differentiates Thunderhead NOW, the company's document generation platform, from traditional players in the insurance industry by spotlighting its technology leadership and innovation.

Thunderhead NOW enables insurance companies worldwide to manage and deliver rich, multi-channel customer communications, empowering business users to improve time-to-value. With Thunderhead NOW, companies can also effectively maximize customer engagement and retention. Celent's ABCD Vendor Comparison Model, a multi-dimensional graph, ranks vendors based on their product's functionality, technology, number of customers and depth of client services.

Celent's report and rating style suggest the Thunderhead NOW enterprise communications platform may provide superior flexibility for insurers. Its easy integration with an organization's existing business process management (BPM) and enterprise content management (ECM) systems, as well as its leadership in leveraging XML and service-oriented architecture (SOA), illustrate the product's “one-platform-for-all-communications” approach. This highlights its attractiveness to insurance companies of all sizes.

“Thunderhead has utilized XML and other open standards to create a very flexible and powerful document automation system,” said report author Jeff Goldberg, senior analyst with Celent. “The Thunderhead platform is intended to move document authoring out of the hands of IT and move the responsibility of creating content to content owners and design to designers. The Thunderhead approach provides an excellent opportunity to manage a brand strategy across all documents and channels.”

“Thunderhead's large base of customers in the insurance industry must have access to the right tools for enabling personalized, multi-channel communications,” said Glen Manchester, chief executive officer of Thunderhead. “The Celent team clearly understands our positioning and the value of our open- standards approach, validating the way our platform separates presentation style from content. This helps with maintenance and enables multi-channel communication, which is critical in order to communicate with your customers effectively. We're happy to be named in this very competitive industry as a leading vendor, and to be recognized by Celent's experienced team of experts.”