TRADE1ASIA
SUN AND ARIBA EXCELLENT SUPPORT

"I strongly recommend the Sun and Ariba combination. In addition to serving our needs well, they offer an excellent partnership with each other. Their openness and willingness to provide assistance goes far beyond technical support and has been the key to our success. It was a great help to learn from their experience. We're already making plans to expand our business, and there's no question that Sun and Ariba will be at the heart of our future offerings."

- Yoon Kam Choon,
Chief Executive Officer,
Trade1Asia

Company

• Trade1Asia

Key Business Issues

• Introduce e-commerce to new segments of the South-east Asian market Engage partners who combine strong technology with technical and business support
• Provide highly responsive and comprehensive Web services

Business Results

• Smooth implementation leading to timely introduction of services
• Enthusiastic customer reception
• Excellent uptime and performance record

Configuration Specifics

• Four Sun Enterprise[tm] 420R servers
• Two Sun Enterprise 220R servers
• Two Ultra[tm] 10 servers
• Solaris[tm] 8 Operating Environment
• Ariba Marketplace 7.2K software
• Ariba Dynamic Trade 2.1 software

Industry

• E-commerce

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Trade1Asia is a business-to-business portal serving South-east Asia with two Strategic Business Units. T1A Procure is an e-procurement service that helps businesses improve and regain control of maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) procurement. T1A Exchange enables small to medium sized firms to adopt e-commerce and facilitates transactions on the Internet. Both services are based on technologies from Sun Microsystems, Inc. and Ariba, Inc.

Sun and Ariba were chosen not only for their industry leadership, scalability and reliability - but especially for the true partnering attitude they displayed toward each other and toward Trade1Asia. The Sun and Ariba team fulfilled all of Trade1Asia's high expectations, helping the company introduce new segments of the South-east Asian market to the many benefits of e-commerce.

Introducing New Segments of the South-east Asian Market to E-Commerce
Singapore-based Trade1Asia was formed in July of 2000 as a member of the Keppel Group of companies, a multinational company with assets in excess of $33 billion (Singapore dollars) and business operations spanning 20 countries. Trade1Asia is jointly owned by K1 Ebiz, Keppel TatLee Bank, Keppel T&T, Deutsche Bank, and ICG Commerce. The rapidly growing firm currently employs 35 people who develop and deploy e-commerce platforms that serve the needs of businesses throughout South-east Asia.

Partnerships are central to Trade1Asia's way of doing business. The company views its customers as long term partners, and its role as a partner bringing the benefits of e-business to segments of the Asian economy that have experience only with traditional procurement methods. Therefore, when the time came to select the platforms upon which to base its e-commerce portals, Trade1Asia looked for the same true partnering attitude - a search that led to Sun and Ariba.

Partnering Attitude Distinguishes Sun and Ariba
"We examined various e-commerce software platforms first, and Ariba quickly rose to the top of the list," explained Yoon Kam Choon, Chief Executive Officer. "Ariba's Marketplace 7.2K and Dynamic Trade 2.1 software have the functionality and overall strength we needed and the presence in the marketplace - both locally and globally - to command respect from companies of all sizes. Ariba's people have in-depth experience helping firms like ours achieve success introducing new e-commerce portals, and they offered to share their expertise with us."

"When we moved on to examine hardware system offerings, Sun emerged just as quickly as the obvious choice," Yoon continued. "For the imperatives in an e-commerce platform - stability, scalability, and reliability - Sun is clearly the industry leader. Sun has the best overall technology and very competitive pricing. But most importantly of all, when Sun's personnel approached us they made it clear they wanted to develop a long-term relationship with us. They offered not only to provide the strong technical support we knew we'd require, but also the overall business support that has been so important in bringing new kinds of service to our marketplace. Sun has abundant experience with endeavors similar to ours, and like Ariba they offered to share that experience to help us achieve success. Our parent company participated in our decision, and they found Sun's and Ariba's attitude very appealing."

The production configuration that Trade1Asia selected, all of which is protected under the SunSpectrum[sm] Gold service plan, consists of four Sun Enterprise 420R database and application servers and a pair of Sun Enterprise 220R Web servers. Two Ultra[tm] 10 servers provide a development and testing environment that is protected under the SunSpectrum Silver service plan.

Sun Professional Services helped bring the system up quickly by providing timely installation of the Solaris[tm] 8 Operating Environment and by rack mounting and installing all system components.

Excellent Support from Sun and Ariba Facilitate Smooth Implementation and Deployment
Development proceeded smoothly throughout late 2000 as Trade1Asia developers customized Ariba for the specific needs of its two SBUs. In January of 2001 the first of them, T1A Procure, was launched. T1A Procure offers a complete suite of online tools for facilitating MRO procurement. Every purchasing function, from purchase order generation to billing and settlement, can now be accomplished over the Web. The service is designed for easy deployment by companies of all sizes, who are able to see significant bottom line improvements in as little as four weeks.

In March Trade1Asia's marketplace, T1A Exchange, went live to an equally enthusiastic reception from customers. Targeted toward small and medium sized businesses using Old Economy transaction practices, T1A Exchange offers a suite of products and services specifically tailored for migrating those practices to the Internet. T1A Exchange's services span the gamut from setting up local area networks to gathering intelligence to cataloging and dynamic trading. To facilitate online transactions, businesses are provided with a host of value-added services ranging from company credit checks and trade settlement insurance to company credit ratings. The company even provides assistance in financing by administering pre-approved government grants to lower startup costs.

"Both platforms are operating well and delivering crisp response times to users dependably, just as we had expected," reported Yoon. "That's a tribute to both Sun and Ariba. In fact, every one of the expectations we had of our vendors at the beginning has been satisfied in full. From all points of view - uptime, performance, scalability and functionality - we've had absolutely no problems, and I have a high comfort level that it's going to continue that way."

"I strongly recommend the Sun and Ariba combination," Yoon concluded. "They partner well with each other, and with us. Their openness and willingness to provide assistance that goes far beyond technical support has been key to our success. It was a great help to learn from their experience. We're already making plans to expand our business, and there's no question that Sun and Ariba will be at the heart of our future offerings."

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