Artemis Alliance Launch of Business Rules User Group a Resounding Success

Enthusiastic response from companies across the United States

St. Paul, MN – January 10, 2005 – Artemis Alliance, Inc., a full-service information technology firm specializing in Business Rules Management, announced today that it has successfully launched the first Business Rules User Group (BRUG) in the nation. Business rules are of great interest to companies that are experiencing business change far more rapidly than traditional, code-based software architectures can gracefully support. The success of the first two meetings indicates that the BRUG provides valuable assistance to organization struggling with the complex issues involved in successfully implementing a business rules initiative. The BRUG provides a setting for both business and technical members to gain and share knowledge about business rule and inference engine technologies, projects, and initiatives.

The first meeting, held on September 15, 2004 at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN, was attended by 23 people from 12 companies representing the insurance, banking, mortgage, health care, software, financial services, and health & fitness sectors. The November meeting focused on business rules engine vendor and product analysis.

As news about the value of the BRUG spread, there have been requests from all over the country to add webinars and to broadcast the meetings over the Internet. These are being considered, but the final decision will be up to the members. An online newsletter, produced by Artemis Alliance, Inc. will be available at the February user group meeting and will be available online after the meeting.

“That first meeting confirmed our thinking that there is substantial interest in this topic. The discussion was in depth, wide ranging and continued past the scheduled end time for the meeting,” said Wyatt Wood, interim president of the BRUG and Director of Sales for Artemis Alliance, Inc. “In fact,” Mr. Wood went on to say, “Due to the volume of content to cover and attendee participation, meetings have been extended to 4 hours. I was pleased to see that we had a mix of both technical and business people. There has been extensive national interest including conducting a larger annual or bi-annual national meeting. We were gratified to see that our assessment that this is a hot topic with no central venue for education, sharing of war stories, networking, etc. was validated by the local, regional, and national interest in this user group.”

The next BRUG meeting will take place on February 3, 2005. This meeting will use a round robin format with 4 panelists from corporations in the retail, insurance, and health care industries followed by questions and discussion. In addition to previous attendees, representatives from the retail, transportation, airline, and manufacturing sectors are scheduled to attend. For additional information on the BRUG, go to http://www.artemisalliance.com/brug.

“BRUG has been even more well received than we had initially hoped. It is especially gratifying to me to see how Artemis’ ability to really listen to our clients has directly translated to an independent users group that is tackling some complex issues,” said Donna Hentges, Chief Executive Officer of Artemis Alliance, Inc. Ms Hentges continued, “We plan on continuing to support the activities of the BRUG, but we are well aware of the importance of BRUG becoming an independent forum for the discussion of these business critical issues.“

About Business Rules

Business rules are a formal expression of the knowledge or preferences of an organization. A business rules approach deploys technology that externalizes and manages the thinking or decision-making capacity of an organization thereby empowering the organization to use technology as an extension of its intellectual power. Once a business rules system is in place, non-technical analysts can more quickly introduce business rule changes allowing the organization to anticipate or react quickly to the ever-changing regulatory or competitive environment. Overall, the automation of complex decisions for various business processes results in improved sales or faster response to customers, and shorter lead times in general while lowering costs through increased productivity, reduced engineering times and fewer errors.

About Artemis Alliance, Inc.

Artemis Alliance, Inc (http://www.artemisalliance.com), in business since 1993, is an information technology services firm specializing in Business Rules Management. Based in St. Paul, Minnesota, Artemis Alliance has clients throughout the United States across a broad spectrum of IT-intensive industries. Artemis’ practice focuses on the key engineering, analysis and management disciplines necessary for successful Business Rules and other IT projects. Within these disciplines Artemis delivers leading edge skills, industry-wide perspective, and practical project experience. Artemis Alliance, Inc. has the experience and skills to assure that business rules management projects align with business-driven requirements and architectural best practices resulting in a functional, resilient end product.

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Wyatt Wood, Director of Sales
Artemis Alliance, Inc.
289 East Fifth St., Suite 211
St. Paul, MN 55101
651.227.7172
wwood@artemisalliance.com