Services Procurement Applications Market Share Expected to Grow by 500 Percent Over the Next Three Years.

Sunnyvale, CA – January 6, 2004 — Elance, Inc. today announced that Giga Research, a wholly owned subsidiary of Forrester Research, has released a new report that names Elance as the largest player in the growing market for services procurement solutions. The report, "Market Overview 2004: E-Procurement and E-Sourcing - What Will it Take to Break the Glass Floor in Demand?" identifies services procurement as a rapidly growing product segment in the overall e-procurement applications market.

In the report, Giga vice president and research leader Andrew Bartels calls services procurement a "new, growing segment," estimating that the market share for services procurement applications will grow by more than 500% over the next 3 years (from 2% of the overall e-procurement and e-sourcing market in 2003 to 11% by 2006).

Describing the growing need for services procurement applications, Bartels notes that services represent between 30 percent and 50 percent of most enterprise buying, but typically are fragmented by department and inefficiently managed. Products such as the Elance SPM 4^TM services procurement and management application suite manage all the steps for sourcing and purchasing services with a particular focus on closely tracking and managing the services engagement to assure the contracted service was delivered as promised.

The report also notes that services procurement offerings from specialist vendors such as Elance offer "clearly superior" capabilities to those from e-procurement suite vendors. Giga advises that most large enterprises are better off with a "best-of-breed" solution, rather than buying a suite of applications from a single vendor.

"This new report from Giga Research confirms Elance's leadership in services procurement and management, a market that continues to experience explosive growth," said Fabio Rosati, president and CEO of Elance. "Giga's findings echo the increasing demand we see from leading global enterprises and their strong interest in the cost reductions, efficiency improvements and supplier performance enhancements that can be realized by adopting a solution designed for the unique needs of services."

About Elance, Inc.
Elance is the leading provider of software solutions for Services Procurement and Management (SPM) that improve the way organizations buy and manage services ñ one of the largest components of corporate spending. With the Elance SPM 4ô application suite, large organizations can gain visibility into services spend and performance, establish and control enterprise processes, and achieve 10-20% hard cost savings across a broad range of external service categories. Elance also provides the Elance Onlineô services marketplace, the leading Web-based project marketplace that connects small- and medium-sized businesses with a global pool of high-quality service providers. For more information on Elance, please call 650-316-7500 or visit www.elance.com.

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Elance, Elance SPM 4 and Elance Online are trademarks or registered trademarks of Elance, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

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