Plateau Congratulates Winners of ASTD Best Awards

ASTD Recognizes Plateau Customers BB&T Corporation, Perkins+Will and B&W Pantex with BEST Awards for Demonstrating Excellence in Learning

Arlington, Va. - 14 October, 2008 – Plateau Systems, a leading provider of talent management software, services and solutions, today announced three of the company’s current customers have been honored by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) with a 2008 BEST Award. BB&T Corporation, Perkins+Will and B&W Pantex were among 40 organizations recently recognized by ASTD for achieving success with their enterprise-wide learning and development initiatives. According to ASTD, these companies are BEST at Building talent Enterprise-wide, Supported by the organization’s leaders fostering a Thorough learning culture.

The Plateau customers who earned BEST Awards this year are using Plateau’s Talent Management solutions in innovative ways to drive critical human capital initiatives across their enterprises. They include:

• BB&T Corporation – Ranked number two on the ASTD BEST Award rankings, BB&T uses Plateau Learning and Plateau Analytics to deliver, manage and track enterprise-wide learning activities.


• Perkins+Will – Ranked number seven on the 2008 ASTD BEST Award rankings, Perkins+Will has integrated Plateau Learning with the company’s internal HR solution and Plateau Virtual Learning System with Microsoft® Office Live Meeting to deliver live instruction quickly and cost effectively.


• B&W Pantex – Ranked number 22 on the ASTD BEST Award rankings, B&W Pantex has deployed Plateau’s Learning Management System (LMS) to support its comprehensive learning strategy.

“BB&T, Perkins+Will and B&W Pantex have all achieved tremendous success with their learning and development initiatives, and they all appreciate the role learning plays in individual and organizational performance,” said Shelly Heiden, EVP Global Operations at Plateau. “Plateau is proud to be providing the tools these organizations depend on to support their critical human capital initiatives. We congratulate them on this well-deserved recognition from ASTD.”

Established in 2003, the BEST Awards Winner’s Circle is comprised of diverse organizations that span a broad range of global organizations and industries, including small and large private, public, and not-for-profit organizations. The Awards recognize organizations that create, support, and champion learning opportunities for results and a learning culture. The 2008 ASTD BEST Award winners are featured in the October issue of Training + Development (T+D), ASTD’s monthly magazine, and were honored during a reception on October 2 in Washington, D.C.

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About Plateau
Plateau is a leading provider of talent management software, content and services designed to increase workforce productivity and drive business success. Plateau’s award-winning software is powering talent management initiatives across some of the world’s most successful organizations, including the American Red Cross, General Electric, the Internal Revenue Service, Capital One Services and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Industry analysts at Bersin & Associates, Forrester Research and other leading information and technology research and advisory firms continue to recognize Plateau’s leadership in delivering best-in-class functionality, technology and customer satisfaction. Plateau is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia and has offices across the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit http://www.plateau.com/.

Cadence Design Systems Selects Plateau to Power Talent Management Initiatives Across Extended Enterprise

Leader in Global Electronic Design Innovation to use Plateau Learning Management System, Virtual Learning System and iContent to Deploy and Track Training for Thousands of Internal and External Global Users

Arlington, Va. - 2 October, 2008 – Plateau Systems, a leading provider of talent management software, services and solutions, today announced that Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: CDNS), the leader in global electronic design innovation, selected Plateau’s talent management solutions to deliver and manage training throughout its extended enterprise. By selecting Plateau’s talent management solutions for inter- and intra-enterprise use, Cadence’s 5,100 global employees and more than 13,000 external users - including partners and customers - can access training anytime, anywhere. This expanded investment in delivering 24/7 training to employees, partners and customers underscores Cadence’s commitment to making its customers successful by maximizing design team productivity and helping users reduce time-to-market.

Cadence Design Systems is a leader in the highly competitive electronic design automation (EDA) industry, where customer engineers depend on the quality of their industry-leading technologies and engineering services and their ability to constantly innovate to meet consumer demand for smaller and sleeker electronic devices. To meet this demand, Cadence maintains offices distributed worldwide – including China, India, Europe, Russia, Israel, Japan, Korea, Taiwan and North America – and one of the electronics industry’s most robust partner and alliance programs. As a leader in EDA and sponsor of several significant initiatives across the electronics industry, Cadence is committed to ensuring that its design teams, alliance members and customers are up to date on the latest technology, techniques and methodologies required for achieving design success and remaining at the forefront of technological innovation.

Through Plateau Learning Management, Cadence will be able to deploy training across its extended enterprise and track its completion. Plateau will provide hosting for the solution, enabling Cadence to deliver its Internet Learning Series (iLS) self-paced Cadence Education classes to users who want to complete training at their own pace, anytime and anywhere. Cadence decided to migrate its previously disparate LMS solutions to Plateau in order to consolidate its internal learning services and external education services onto a single platform.

“Consolidating our internal and external LMS solutions through Plateau enables us to significantly reduce the administrative time we spent on the LMS and content solutions, and keep the focus on providing the training our employees, partners and customers need to maintain highly productive design teams,” said Ellen Tam, Vice President, Worldwide Field Operations, Cadence Design Systems. “In our review, we found that Plateau provided the industry’s leading talent management solutions for deploying and managing training within the extended enterprise.”

Cadence will also use Plateau to register its customers for instructor led training as well as Virtual Classroom Learning, a new innovative method of delivery where customers can remotely attend training classes-taking advantage of live instructions through a conference call - and perform hands on exercises using virtual lab environment with the instructor monitoring and answering their questions. Virtual Classroom and iLS offerings provide Cadence customers a unique opportunity to receive training more cost effectively and efficiently.

“Cadence is one of a growing number of leading organizations who recognize that delivering training to extended user communities is as critical to the company’s success as training and development of their internal employees,” said Paul Sparta, Chairman and CEO, Plateau Systems. “Employee, partner and customer productivity is directly tied to Cadence’s ability to deploy knowledge across their extended enterprise, rapidly and efficiently. Using Plateau, Cadence can deploy, manage and track ongoing training throughout its extended enterprise to create tighter partner relationships and expand its competitive advantage.”

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About Plateau
Plateau is a leading provider of talent management software, content and services designed to increase workforce productivity and drive business success. Plateau’s award-winning software is powering talent management initiatives across some of the world’s most successful organizations, including the American Red Cross, General Electric, the Internal Revenue Service, Capital One Services and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Industry analysts at Bersin & Associates, Forrester Research and other leading information and technology research and advisory firms continue to recognize Plateau’s leadership in delivering best-in-class functionality, technology and customer satisfaction. Plateau is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia and has offices across the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit http://www.plateau.com/.