Prospectus Summary
You should read the following summary together with the more detailed information regarding our company and the common stock being sold in this offering and our consolidated financial statements and accompanying notes appearing elsewhere in this prospectus.
We are a leading provider of e-Business integration software that enables the seamless flow of information within and among enterprises on a global basis. Our comprehensive e*Gate software suite provides companies with a flexible and easily configurable platform to connect applications and systems not only within an organization but also across geographically dispersed enterprises. We believe that we offer the only end-to-end e-Business integration solution encompassing intra-enterprise, or application-to-application, integration and inter-enterprise, or B2B, integration, as well business process management capabilities. e*Gate builds upon more than nine years of our dedication to the continuous development of application and systems integration solutions within and among enterprises.
e*Gate enables our customers to connect applications, databases or systems, deploy and manage trading partner paradigms, including direct B2B and trading exchanges, and manage and optimize business processes that occur within and beyond an enterprise. Our solution provides customers with the flexibility to implement and adapt their business strategies in response to market dynamics and pursue new business initiatives to enhance revenue, profit and customer service. e*Gate's distributed architecture is designed to scale throughout an organization's network of customers, partners and suppliers and meet the performance requirements of global e-Business. Our comprehensive GUI-based solution reduces or eliminates the need for custom programming and is designed for easy deployment, enabling rapid time-to-market for e-Business initiatives. e*Gate can also lower operational costs for customers by streamlining business processes as well as by reducing IT investments and costs.
To promote additional market penetration of our products, we have established strategic alliances with two of the largest independent systems integrators, Andersen Consulting and EDS. The alliances provide for joint development and marketing of vertical market offerings and generation of license revenues for STC. We have incentivized each of these partners by issuing them warrants to purchase shares of our common stock, with the vesting of the shares conditioned upon achievement of agreed upon milestones, which include the generation of qualified customer introductions or revenues for STC. In addition, Andersen Consulting has an equity interest in STC, and EDS has agreed to buy shares of our common stock concurrently with our initial public offering at the public offering price.
We license our products and sell our services primarily through our direct sales force, complemented by the selling and support efforts of our systems integrators and resellers. We have 12 international sales and support offices. As of December 31, 1999, we had licensed our products to over 1,200 customers globally in a variety of industries, including financial services/insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, retail/e-Commerce/services and telecommunications/utilities. Our customers include Amdahl, ABN Amro, Barnes & Noble.com, Bausch and Lomb, Denticare of California, Fluor, Hewlett-Packard, J.P. Morgan, Nike, Northern Trust, PETsMART, UBS AG and WestLB Bank.
We were incorporated as STDC Corporation in the state of California in December 1989 and changed our name to Software Technologies Corporation in June 1992. Our principal executive offices are located at 404 East Huntington Drive, Monrovia, California 91016, and our telephone number at this address is (626) 471-6000. Our World Wide Web address is www.stc.com. The information on our Web site is not incorporated by reference into this prospectus. Our registered trademarks include e*Gate, DataGate and the STC logo. This prospectus also includes other trade names, trademarks and service marks of ours and of other companies and organizations. 1