(San Diego, CA. September 4, 2003) – The Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA), the leading industry Association for IT support professionals, today announced that empolis North America has joined the SSPA Vendor Member program, a membership dedicated to bringing IT support service buyers and sellers together online. The SSPA Vendor Membership is a community that resides at the Web address www.thesspa.com. The primary focus of this membership is to increase the visibility of vendors and suppliers within the IT service and support community.

“We are pleased to have empolis as a new SSPA Member,” said Bill Rose, SSPA Founder/CEO. “They bring valuable expertise to the technical support industry around the implementation of content and knowledge management systems within the service lifecycle. Unique among our vendor members, empolis offers a complete suite of products for content classification, collaborative authoring, and knowledge management. They are a great addition to the SSPA Vendor Member program.”

“Our customers have achieved measurable benefits in months, not years, using empolis’s Help Desk/Field Service solution – and we look forward to sharing their success stories with the SSPA community,” said Michael Johnson, Managing Director of empolis North America. “We believe we can gain valuable insight into how we can enrich our offering for high technology support organizations, and look forward to a mutually beneficial relationship.”

empolis is the latest member of the SSPA Vendor program, which includes companies such as InQuira, Inc.; UniPress; Soffront Software; Talisma Corporation; Usability Sciences Corporation; NetReflector, Inc.; Mitel Corporation; Kaidara Software; Step 9 Software Corporation; TheBrain Technologies; Astea International; Netopia, Inc.; ePeople; Lionbridge Technologies; Expertcity; Motive Communications; CustomerSat.com; Intuit; Ask Jeeves; ECE; Prometric; Kanisa; Primus; TuVox; Satmetrix Systems; Front Range Solutions; GWI Software; ICT Group; Zeacom; White Pajama; WebEx; Service Strategies Corporation; Service800 and others.

About empolis
empolis North America designs and implements Content and Knowledge Management systems for help desk, field service, customer self-service, technical information delivery, and corporate knowledge sharing. empolis uses a proven suite of products and tools – including advanced case-based search & retrieval and XML content management – for rapid, cost-effective implementation. Customers include GE Medical Systems, GE Power, Hewlett Packard and United Technologies. empolis is a Bertelsmann company, part of the Arvato division.

About SSPA
Founded in 1989, the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA) was formed to focus on the specific needs of service executives who are responsible for support centers and overall customer relations. Today, the SSPA represents over 21,600 service professionals at 2,500 support centers worldwide. These executives look to SSPA to provide insight into the future of support services, a road map of best practices within our industry and access to the best service and support vendors. SSPA has become the center of support providing a reliable and comprehensive resource for news, research, benchmarking, standards and collaboration.

SSPA was created for professionals, managers and executives that make their living in the IT support services community. It is not a generic, one-size-fits all website where nobody ever feels like they belong. SSPA is dynamic, interactive, living resource specifically designed for the unique needs of support professionals. This exciting virtual community creates a forum for constant interaction with peers, industry experts, technology vendors and much more. For more information regarding the SSPA and other related divisions, log on to www.thesspa.com or send an email to info@thesspa.com.