Actuate Corporation (NASDAQ:ACTU), the people behind BIRT™, today announced ABS Nautical Systems as recipient of the 2009 Actuate Excellence Award for Innovation in the OEM category.  ABS Nautical Systems (NS), one of the leading providers of fleet management software packages for the maritime industries, is recognized for its creativity and success in using BIRT to improve business reporting for its customers.  NS embedded BIRT so ship owners and operators could extract data and create custom reports from NS' integrated data management ERP system built specifically for the maritime and offshore industries.

Prior to implementing BIRT, NS customers would routinely contract Nautical Systems for their ad-hoc  report programming requirements.  Wishing to free up valuable programmer time, and provide its customers more on-demand service, NS began looking for an open source information reporting tool it could leverage and seamlessly embed in its software - one that would deliver for the company and its customers, both immediately and in the future.

"The BIRT open source platform gave us a great deal of flexibility in all of our stages of development and offered ease of integration into our NS solution" said Sandipan Bhattacharya, Vice President Application Services for ABS.  "The ability of BIRT and Actuate to scale and our visibility into Actuate's product roadmap gives us a number of options to assist ABS Nautical Systems in continuing to realize benefits such as increased timeliness to market, a broadening customer base and improved overall customer satisfaction."

ABS Nautical Systems offers a fully integrated, modular approach to managing the principal operational expenses associated with a vessel or offshore rig, ranging from maintenance and repair, to regulatory requirements, purchasing and inventory, and crew management and payroll.  BIRT gathers data from these integrated modules, consolidates and extracts the data so users can create their own reports.  Through the user-friendly interface, users can produce reports customized to their individual and departmental needs and preferences.  "NS customers now have the ability to see the data presented the way they want to see it, without having to pay for custom development," said Bhattacharya.

"We are delighted to present the 2009 Actuate Excellence Award for OEM Innovation to ABS Nautical Systems, a shining example of BIRT's strength in delivering timely Web 2.0 applications that drive revenue through higher end-customer satisfaction and speed to market," said Nobby  Akiha, senior vice president, Marketing, Actuate.  "We look forward to many more years of working with NS and look forward to assisting the company in empowering their customers with flexible and interactive information applications."