Phase Forward Partners with Virtusa Corporation to Expand In-Country Presence
Hyderabad, India – November 21, 2007– Phase Forward (NASDAQ: PFWD), a leading provider of data management solutions for clinical trials and drug safety, today announced the establishment of a wholly owned subsidiary, Phase Forward Software Services India Private Limited, based in Hyderabad, India. In building this subsidiary, Phase Forward will be working with current partner Virtusa Corporation (NASDAQ: VRTU), a leading global information technology (IT) services company. Phase Forward’s Hyderabad offices will be collocated with Virtusa’s facilities.
Phase Forward has a long and successful track record in the Indian market, having worked with several partners and sponsors in the region for the last seven years to support several hundred hosted clinical trials. While expanding in India, Phase Forward will leverage its highly successful model of staffing global projects with in-country and external resources. This approach has supported Phase Forward’s growth in response to market demand, while enabling Phase Forward to deploy the most skilled professionals for a particular project in a cost-effective manner. In addition, this approach is specifically designed to give Phase Forward and its customers optimal flexibility and scalability in supporting rapid enterprise-wide adoption of Phase Forward solutions.
“The Indian market is strategic to Phase Forward’s continued growth,” said Phase Forward’s CEO and President Bob Weiler. “The formation of a Phase Forward subsidiary in India is a natural extension of our long-established strategy to give our customers access to the most advantageous and cost-effective mix of offshore and onshore resources available. Since India is such a high-growth area for the biopharma services industry, we wanted to expand our commitment to the region by adding our own employees to our partner resources in the region.”
“We are pleased with the high-quality partnership we have built with Phase Forward,” said Virtusa’s Chairman and CEO Kris Canekeratne. “We are delighted to extend ourselves beyond engineering services to include professional services as well. This is an important step in the evolution of our pharmaceutical practice as it expands the range of services that we offer our pharmaceutical clients.”
Phase Forward and Virtusa have already worked together on a number of successful projects, combining resources as appropriate from their professional services and engineering organizations.
Phase Forward has developed effective and efficient processes for working with India-based staff, allowing the company’s team in India to work seamlessly with colleagues in the U.K. and U.S. Senior technical resources have been relocated to India for this purpose and the overall activity will be led by Steve Powell, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Sales.
The addition of the Indian-based subsidiary marks an important extension of Phase Forward’s global presence, which, in addition to its U.S. headquarters, includes operations in Europe, Japan and Australia.
About Phase Forward
Phase Forward is a leading provider of integrated data management solutions for clinical trials and drug safety. The company offers proven solutions for electronic data capture (InForm(TM)), clinical data management (Clintrial(TM)), clinical trials signal detection (CTSD(TM)), strategic pharmacovigilance (WebVDME(TM) and Signal Management), adverse event reporting (Clintrace(TM)) and applied data standards (WebSDM(TM)). In addition, the company provides services in the areas of application implementation, hosting and validation, data integration, business process optimization, safety data management and industry standards. Phase Forward's products and services have been utilized in over 10,000 clinical trials involving more than 1,000,000 clinical trial study participants at over 250 organizations and regulatory agencies worldwide including: AstraZeneca, Boston Scientific, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Eli Lilly, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, GlaxoSmithKline, Harvard Clinical Research Institute, Merck Serono, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, PAREXEL International, Procter & Gamble, Quintiles, sanofi-aventis, Schering-Plough Research Institute, Servier, Tibotec and the U.K. Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency. Additional information about Phase Forward is available at www.phaseforward.com.
Cautionary Statement
Certain statements made in this press release that are not based on historical information are forward-looking statements which are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. This press release contains express or implied forward-looking statements relating to, among other things, Phase Forward’s expectations concerning its future growth, its business outlook, and the effectiveness and market acceptance of its international strategy and activities. These statements are neither promises nor guarantees, but are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties, many of which are beyond Phase Forward's control, which could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated in these forward-looking statements. In particular, the risks and uncertainties include, among other things, Phase Forward's inability to convince current and potential customers to order its products, the failure of customers to realize benefits from the use of these products, changes in industry standards, and changes in regulatory requirements applicable to Phase Forward’s customers and the manner in which they conduct business, the lack of market acceptance of Phase Forward’s new and existing technologies and global strategies, and competition. Existing and prospective investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. Phase Forward undertakes no obligation to update or revise the information contained in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or circumstances or otherwise. For additional disclosure regarding these and other risks faced by Phase Forward, see the disclosure contained in Phase Forward's public filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission including, without limitation, its most recent Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q.