Verizon and US Army Earn ToolBook Design Awards

Customers of SumTotal’s simulation and content authoring solution recognized for Best Online Training and Best ToolBook Productivity Solution at annual ToolBook users conference

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA (September 7, 2005) – SumTotal™ Systems (NASDAQ: SUMT), the largest provider of learning and business performance technologies and services, today announced that the US Army and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) have received this year’s ToolBook Design Awards for their outstanding use of ToolBook, SumTotal’s simulation and interactive content authoring solution. The US Army Space & Missile Defense Command won the award for Best Online Training and Verizon won for the Best ToolBook Productivity Tool.

ToolBook helps organizations create compelling content and simulations that are critical success factors in any organizational learning initiative. Using ToolBook, companies can create professional, standards-based simulations, tutorials, assessments, courseware and other interactive learning content without in-depth programming skills. Based on AICC and SCORM standards, ToolBook also makes it easy to launch and track ToolBook content through a standards-compliant learning management system (LMS).

The ToolBook Design Awards, sponsored by SumTotal, were given at this year’s TBCON 2005, an annual gathering of ToolBook users hosted by Platte Canyon Multimedia Software, a leading value-added reseller of ToolBook in the U.S. “Each year, the ToolBook Design Awards give us an opportunity to discover and to applaud the outstanding, innovative work our customers have done using ToolBook,” said Brad Crain, SumTotal’s VP of ToolBook. “We are constantly impressed by the ways our customers find to leverage the power and flexibility of the solution to create compelling new content and new development processes to help their organizations meet learning and business goals across the enterprise.”

The US Army Space and Missile Defense Command (USASMDC) received the award for Best Online Training, which recognizes courseware deployed in HTML that demonstrates the power of ToolBook to create engaging and effective training content. Michael Hersh of the USASMDC used ToolBook to create a four-course, 30-lesson training suite on satellite communications and related topics that personnel could take online before their hands-on training. Hersh incorporated existing photo, audio and video assets, as well as creating and integrating original animations into the lessons. According to award judges, Hersh’s curriculum demonstrated how much a single developer could accomplish using ToolBook. Hersh’s courseware is featured in the e-Learning Showcase area at www.toolbook.com.

The award for Best ToolBook Productivity Tool went to a team of Verizon consultants working with the Customer Implementation Support (CIS) team at Verizon Data Services, a division that provides documentation and training on internal proprietary software systems. The award highlights outstanding original tools built by ToolBook users to help develop content more rapidly. Team members Peter Hoyt (Verizon), Tom Hall (TCC Publishing, Inc.) and Lee Karns (Vertical View Software Associates) developed a suite of tools to help subject matter experts and content developers at Verizon more easily and efficiently create multi-media, interactive content using ToolBook. The suite included four tools:

• A tool to help subject matter experts create storyboards
  
• A lesson-builder system for authors to use to automatically generate content from storyboards
  
• A comment collection system that allowed content reviewers to automatically submit feedback
  
• A set of utilities enabling authors to automate changes across numerous courses.

“Deploying new software at Verizon can be challenging as it often must go through several revisions due to the extraordinary complexity of coordination between federal and each state’s rules and regulations,” said Hall. “Responding rapidly to those changes and revisions with new training can be a challenge. The CIS team at Verizon uses ToolBook to meet that challenge because of its flexibility in adapting to specific business environments, as well as a wide variety of training applications.”

According to Hall, the custom-built ToolBook tools that he, Hoyt and Karns created have enabled the Verizon team to compress a process that required an average of three to four man hours per content page to less than an hour. “We are now more focused on content rather than on the process of updating the content,” said Karns.

“Verizon has demonstrated one of the key strengths that differentiates ToolBook from other authoring solutions,” said Crain. “Unlike other tools, content authors can customize ToolBook’s user interface and build custom tools that extend the solution’s capabilities. This allows companies to tailor ToolBook to meet specific authoring needs and to address the specific challenges and business objectives of their organizations. That kind of flexibility and adaptability is a hallmark of SumTotal’s products and one of the reasons why our customers’ learning initiatives are so successful.”

About SumTotal Systems, Inc.

SumTotal Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: SUMT) is the largest provider of learning and business performance technologies and services. SumTotal deploys mission-critical solutions that align learning with organizational and business goals to generate significant bottom-line results. With more than 12 million users worldwide, SumTotal has helped accelerate performance and profits for nearly 700 of the world’s best-known companies and government agencies, including US Army, Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard, Microsoft, United Airlines, Vodafone, Aetna, Accenture, Cendant, Harley-Davidson, Wyeth, Wachovia and D&B. SumTotal has offices throughout the US, in London, Paris, Heidelberg, Sydney, Tokyo and Hyderabad, India. For more information about SumTotal's products and services, visit www.sumtotalsystems.com.

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