Actuate Names Leslie Jarrett of the Bank of East Asia 2009 BIRT Innovation Excellence Award Winner

Actuate Corporation (NASDAQ:ACTU), the people behind BIRT™, has awarded a 2009 Excellence Award for BIRT Innovation to Leslie Jarrett of the Bank of East Asia Ltd in London, for applying a forward-thinking approach to tackling compliance using open source information reporting.

The independent Hong Kong based Bank, which operates in the US, UK and South East Asia, is a prolific user of open source software, demonstrating just how far the technology has come from the early days when many large organisations, especially banks, viewed it with suspicion.

Bank of East Asia began using the Actuate open source BIRT reporting environment in its London office in July 2008, to creatively meet Bank of England and HMRC/Inland Revenue mandates for regulatory reporting submissions. The Bank also champions open source throughout its IT environment, using a range of market-leading solutions, including open source BIRT.

The Actuate Excellence award recognises one individual in particular, Leslie Jarrett of the London Branch of the Bank. An open source evangelist and BIRT specialist, Leslie recently spoke at the RedHat Open Source Forum in favour of adopting open source software for mission-critical applications in a climate which, traditionally, has proven reticent to do so. Leslie is a respected and regular contributor on the open source speaker circuit showcasing his BIRT work and consistently drawing large audiences.

Leslie has been instrumental in creating an innovative technology roadmap for Bank of East Asia, providing more reports to internal and client users, as well as interactivity and rich information visualisation. At its most challenging, this initiative has involved leveraging transactional data locked up in the Bank’s existing systems and porting them into a MySQL Data Warehouse, to empower the business.

"It is extremely gratifying to receive this award,” commented Leslie. "Championing open source software in a banking environment is not an easy thing to do, but to Bank of East Asia’s great credit, it has recognised the substantial competitive benefits that come with breaking new ground, and we are now reaping the rewards of the exciting and ambitious roadmap we have developed.” Leslie continues, "Actuate and BIRT have been central to this strategy, revolutionising our reporting, boosting productivity and efficiency, and keeping the authorities happy. Reports that previously took days to produce now take hours or in some cases, minutes. User confidence is high and complaints very few as we work side by side collaborating to create these highly visual, interactive reports so our users feel a real sense of ownership and involvement.”

Steve Fluin, Actuate’s Senior VP of EMEA added, "Bank of East Asia is a great example of innovation through open source, and its achievements--which are largely down to the belief and perseverance of Leslie Jarrett--are sure to inspire other organisations across the financial services sector, particularly when they weigh up both the competitive and productivity advantages, and the cost efficiencies, of open source software. We are very impressed with what Leslie and the Bank has achieved using BIRT and value added BIRT offerings from Actuate.”

The 2009 Actuate Excellence Award winners were honoured at the Actuate Customer Days held in San Francisco, October 28; New York, November 3; Frankfurt, November 10; London, November 12; and Paris, November 17. To keep up-to-date on Actuate via Twitter, follow Actuate at www.twitter.com/Actuate

Actuate – the people behind BIRT

Actuate founded and continues to co-lead the Eclipse BIRT open source project. BIRT is the premier development environment for Rich Information Applications that present data in compelling and interactive ways via the web on any device. Actuate and its people are dedicated to making BIRT the best environment for our customers to develop Web 2.0 applications that drive revenue through higher customer satisfaction/loyalty and improve operational performance. The people of Actuate continually participate in and provide resources for the vibrant open source community that has emerged around BIRT. Anybody can participate in the BIRT movement by visiting www.birt-exchange.com.

Actuate offers value-add BIRT products and services that speed the development process and bring additional functionality, interactivity and enterprise scalability to BIRT-based Rich Information Applications. Actuate has over 4,400 customers globally in a diverse range of business areas including financial services and the public sector. Founded in 1993, Actuate is headquartered in San Mateo, California, with offices worldwide. Actuate is listed on NASDAQ under the symbol ACTU. For more information, visit the company's web site at www.actuate.com.

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