Elance, Inc. today announced that it has acquired CascadeWorks, Inc., consolidating Elance's position as the leading provider of Services Procurement and Management (SPM) solutions. With this acquisition, the company's customers include globally recognized enterprises including ABN AMRO NA, Charles Schwab & Co., FedEx, Motorola, and Texas Instruments.

Elance's Services Procurement and Management (SPM) solutions address an increasingly critical need in corporations today -- managing service-related expenditures. Recently published research by Elance and the Center for Advanced Purchasing Studies reveals that more than one-third of today's corporate purchasing budgets are spent on services -- averaging almost one billion dollars annually in the typical Global 2000 corporation. A recent Forrester Research survey of 152 CFOs (CFO Omnibus Study, December 2002, Forrester Research) found that CFOs believe that improvements in Services Procurement and Management could save their companies nearly 10% in annual services expenditures -- a savings of almost $100 million in the typical Global 2000 enterprise.

Elance enjoys the largest deployed customer base in the SPM market, a strong direct sales team and channel partnerships, the financial stability and resources to continue to aggressively grow market share, the industry's strongest technology team and a broad product footprint.

"Elance and CascadeWorks represent the two leading, independent software vendors addressing the largely untapped market for Services Procurement and Management solutions," said Fabio Rosati, President and CEO of Elance, Inc. "Customers now have a clear choice: they can settle for services add-ons from generic enterprise application vendors or they can select Elance's best-in-category solutions, which have been specifically designed to address the unique requirements of services procurement and management."

"We're extremely excited about becoming part of Elance and about our position in the market," said Todd Greene, co-founder of CascadeWorks and incoming VP of Product Management for Elance, Inc. "The combination of Elance and CascadeWorks creates a company with a strong list of blue-chip customers, unparalleled understanding of the needs of Global 2000 enterprises and deep capabilities and resources to address the growing need for SPM solutions."

"The processes that companies currently use to procure and manage services are both fragmented and inefficient. As a result, we continue to see a strong market need for services procurement solutions," said Ted Kempf, Principal Analyst, Gartner, Inc. "This latest acquisition is a continuation of the consolidation we've seen in this market."

Elance will continue to support the current generation of both Elance 3(TM) and CascadeWorks Clarity(TM). Future releases of Elance's software will leverage and incorporate the strengths of both companies' products.

The acquisition was completed as an all-stock purchase transaction on February 25, 2003. Current CascadeWorks employees, including certain key executives, have become employees of Elance, Inc. CascadeWorks' lead investor, Chip Linehan of New Enterprise Associates has joined Elance's board of directors. Ray Lane remains chairman of the board of Elance, Inc. Elance will also continue to grow its Elance Online(TM) services marketplace, which experienced more than 60% growth during 2002. Elance is based in Sunnyvale, California