SumTotal Systems Marks One-Year Anniversary

A year after the Click2learn-Docent merger, SumTotal has fulfilled merger promise with new, industry-leading platform, increased market share and unmatched financial strength

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA (March 18, 2005) - One year to the day after shareholders of Click2learn and Docent officially approved the merger of the two organizations, SumTotal™ Systems (NASDAQ: SUMT), the largest provider of learning and business performance technologies, services and processes, is celebrating the realization of the industry leadership its executives promised customers, partners and investors at the new company’s launch.

Click2learn and Docent originally joined forces on March 18, 2004 to create a clear leader in a fragmented industry, and to provide the market with the most comprehensive and innovative set of learning technologies available. At the time of the merger, the combined organization promised to offer customers the benefits of enhanced financial strength, unparalleled depth and breadth of product, a deep experience base, and a unique ability to invest in R&D and future innovation with the largest development team in the industry. To underscore this promise, the new organization established a core mission: to accelerate its customers’ performance and bottom-line profitability through innovative and compelling business solutions.

Today, a full year since the merger was completed, SumTotal continues to deliver on its post-merger goals:

• The company has increased its marketshare lead by adding 126 new customers and expanding its business with more than 480 other customers in its installed base. With more than 675 clients and 450 employees across the globe, at approximately twice the size of its next nearest competitor, SumTotal is the clear market leader



• In December 2004, just nine short months after the merger, the company shipped the revolutionary SumTotal Enterprise Suite 7.0, its first major combined platform release and perhaps the most visible representation of the merger’s success



• To-date, 19 new customers have purchased the new 7.0 platform. 18 existing customers are currently upgrading or have committed to upgrade to SumTotal 7.0, with additional customers committing to the 7.0 platform on a regular basis



• SumTotal has continued to maintain strong financial health and stability, with some $35 million in cash in the bank, and $18.7 million in revenue in the fourth quarter alone



• SumTotal continues to earn praise and acknowledgment from industry analysts and their clients, including being rated as a leader in total installation satisfaction among global enterprise providers in a Bersin & Associates LMS Customer Satisfaction study; being named to Military Training Technology Magazine’s Top 100, Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 and Software Magazine's 22nd Annual Software 500 lists; and earning Frost and Sullivan's 2004 Competitive Strategy Award for the Click2learn-Docent merger

“SumTotal Systems scores at or near the top in the three categories that matter most to buyers: viability, service and product. It has a solid balance sheet, a reputation for service excellence at its 600+ enterprise installations, and a state-of-the-art product with its recently launched Enterprise Suite 7.0. A year after the merger of the predecessor companies, we believe SumTotal Systems is an even stronger leader among enterprise learning infrastructure providers,” said Eric Martinuzzi, sr. research analyst at Craig-Hallum Partners.

“I think the SumTotal merger can be used as a role-model,” said Marc Rosenberg, management consultant in learning and performance and author of “e-Learning” Strategies for Delivering Knowledge in the Digital Age”. “I was impressed with the ease with which the two companies came together. They quickly repositioned themselves in the marketplace, took the best of each of their solutions, and offered up an even better, integrated solution to customers in a short period of time. SumTotal didn’t lose any ground and I think its success makes the entire industry look stronger in the eyes of the customer. A lot of larger companies could learn from its example.“

"SumTotal Systems has done an outstanding job of merging two leading companies in the
LMS market to create an integrated company, product line and market presence,” said Josh Bersin, principal of Bersin & Associates, a research and advisory firm focused on enterprise learning research. “We expect SumTotal to play a major role in shaping the future of training and workforce performance management."

"We had worked successfully with both Click2learn and Docent prior to the merger. However, in the last year we’ve been able to elevate our partnership to a truly strategic level – far beyond what we had before – thanks to the resources and product innovation generated by the merger,” said Jerry Nine, chief operating officer of SkillSoft, a leading content resource provider. "SumTotal's new platform, aggressive roadmap, and dedicated focus on interoperability in any client environment have significantly enhanced our ability to serve mutual customers with the most effective content and technology solutions available."

"WebEx has had a technology partnership with SumTotal since the merger, and we've been very happy with the customer care they've provided to our joint customers," said Sanjay Dalal director of WebEx Training Center business. "There is no question that our SumTotal relationship has been productive for both our companies and our customers."

“It is deeply gratifying to reach this important milestone in our company’s history, having created such a strong, vital organization and having solidified our industry leadership in so many areas,” said R. Andrew Eckert, SumTotal CEO. “We’re especially thankful for the support and enthusiasm of our customers, partners and investors, who have made this such an exciting and successful year, and who have continually challenged us to be our best. We’re also proud of our employees across the globe, who have worked so hard to ensure that our customers were successful even as we navigated the integration of our two organizations.”

“One of the most powerful outcomes of our merger has been the evolution of an organization unified behind common goals and a common roadmap,” said SumTotal president, Kevin Oakes. “Over the past year, this strength of purpose has generated solid business results, groundbreaking new technology and a record of best practices that uniquely position SumTotal to meet the evolving demands of extended global enterprises and government agencies. Every organization we touch deepens our understanding of our customers’ unique environments and challenges, and, as we enter our second year and beyond, we are already moving toward new solutions to help meet those needs.”

About the SumTotal Enterprise Suite 7.0

Providing unparalleled breadth in application and depth in business functionality, the SumTotal Enterprise Suite 7.0 is the industry’s most comprehensive, globally scalable learning and business performance offering, and the only one to combine learning management, learning content management, in-depth analytics and other mission-critical, standards-based learning applications on a single, integrated platform. SumTotal 7.0 promises more flexible, rapid, strategic delivery and management of learning activities; unprecedented options for measuring learning impact on revenues, expenses, cycle time and other business results; and unique interoperability and integration capabilities that dramatically reduce the cost of ownership.

About SumTotal Systems, Inc.

SumTotal Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: SUMT) is the business performance and learning technology industry’s largest single provider of technologies, processes and services. Formed by the merger of industry pioneers Docent and Click2learn, the company is uniquely focused on helping organizations harness and manage mission-critical intellectual power to solve real-world business problems and produce significant bottom-line results. SumTotal has helped accelerate performance and profit for more than 600 of the world’s best-known companies and federal and local government agencies, including Microsoft, AT&T, US Army, Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard, Vodafone, Aetna, Accenture, Cendant, Harley-Davidson, Wyeth, Wachovia and D & B. SumTotal Systems is headquartered in Mountain View, CA, with offices throughout the US, as well as in London, Paris, Heidelberg, Sydney, Tokyo and Hyderabad, India.

Safe Harbor Statement/ Forward-Looking Statements
"Information in this press release contains forward-looking statements. These statements represent SumTotal Systems’ expectations or beliefs concerning future events and include statements, among others, regarding SumTotal Systems’ new product, SumTotal Enterprise Suite 7.0. These statements are not historical facts or guarantees of future performance or events and are based on current expectations, estimates, beliefs, assumptions, goals and objectives, and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to be materially different from the results expressed or implied by these statements. Readers of this press release are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. Additional factors that could cause actual results to differ include, but are not limited to (i) unknown errors or bugs in SumTotal Enterprise Suite 7.0; (ii) unexpected shipment problems or delays of SumTotal Enterprise Suite 7.0; (iii) customers or partners delaying purchasing decisions; (iv) the acceptance of SumTotal Enterprise Suite 7.0 and future product offerings; (v) the ability to successfully implement SumTotal System’s solutions; (vi) the ability to successfully address technological developments and standards; (vii) ability to successfully manage growth, significant current and expected additional competition, and the need to continue to expand product distribution and services offerings; and (viii) other events and other important factors disclosed previously and from time to time in SumTotal Systems' filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the quarterly report filed on Form 10Q on November 15, 2004. SumTotal Systems assumes no obligation to update the information in this press release."