SOFTWARE FROM IBM GIVES BUSINESSES EASIER, FASTER, CHEAPER WAY TO CONNECT WIRELESS AND OTHER DEVICES TO THE INTERNET

SOMERS, NY, October 3, 2000 : IBM today announced the availability of WebSphere Everyplace Suite Enterprise Edition, a highly scalable server software for connecting millions of wireless and other Internet-ready devices to the Web. It is the first product that lets businesses deliver content and applications to a full range of devices, regardless of whether they connect over wireless or wireline networks. IBM also announced broad support from software developers that will use WebSphere Everyplace Suite to extend their applications to a variety of pervasive devices.

"In the next few years, there will be billions of things -- from mobile phones and PDAs to Internet appliances, gaming machines and everyday household appliances -- connected to the Internet," said Jon Prial, Director of Marketing, IBM Pervasive Computing. "This phenomenon requires new hardware and software infrastructure that can handle a massive number of transactions, as well as effectively manage the delivery of new applications and services to these devices."

Until now, linking non-traditional computing devices to Web-based applications has been an arduous task of cobbling together different software products that allow the devices to operate in a networked environment. By combining the necessary software functions into one tightly integrated middleware offering, IBM’s WebSphere Everyplace Suite makes this process easier and faster -- in some cases shaving months off the time it takes to deploy new applications. Designed to scale rapidly, the product has been tested to support the registration of more than one million users.

Start Now, Grow Fast
WebSphere Everyplace Suite’s integrated approach gives businesses a robust, yet flexible platform from the start, allowing them to easily manage upgrades to their applications and quickly add support for new and different kinds of devices. For example, an airline that wants to let passengers check flight information from a WAP phone would use the product’s wireless gateway and transcoding technologies. When it’s ready to add new features, like the ability to download personal travel itineraries, there is no need to buy any new software. It simply "turns on" the product’s synchronization function, which gives their passengers real-time access to backend databases. Then if the airline wants to enable real-time ticket reservations or e-commerce from a mobile device, it activates the message queuing software, which helps ensure that transactions go through once, and only once.

Boeard Industry Support
Part of IBM’s strategy is to work with software and solution providers to help them use WebSphere Everyplace Suite as the primary tool to extend applications to new devices. With a goal to enable more than 300 Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) by early next year, more than a dozen companies, representing an important cross section of finance, enterprise and vertical industry applications, have arleady announced plans to use WebSphere Everyplace Suite.
They include:

• Agenetics, a technology company that is developing an advanced computing infrastructure for hosting next-generation personal agents.
• Digia, a leading 3G Wireless Internet software company that develops electronic commerce systems and Internet solutions.
• Extensity Inc., a leading provider of Internet solutions for travel and expense management, project time capture, and procurement solutions.
• Financial Fusion, a global provider of e-finance Web and wireless applications.
• Indus International, a global leader in Enterprise Asset Management (EAM)solutions.
• Macalla Software, a leading provider of mobile e-Commerce products and services to the global finance and telecommunications industry.
• MicroStrategy Inc., a leading worldwide provider of business intelligence solutions for corporations worldwide.
• Mobile Logic, a leading mobile solutions provider for the enterprise blending enabling technologies and services to deliver corporate data to mobile workers.
• PRISM Communication Systems, Inc.(PCS), a leading provider of wireless Internet and Intranet business solutions with applications in mobile Healthcare, wireless portal for business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce.
• River Run Software Group, an industry leader in providing mobile cross-industry software solutions for Field Service, Field Inspection, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Supply Chain Management(SCM), Sales Force Automation(SFA), Healthcare, Insurance, Manufacturing Retail & Distribution, Utilities.
• w- Technologies, formerly w-Trade Technologies, a global provider of wireless application products and software solutions based in New York.
  
  WebSphere Everyplace Suite offers the following:
  
• Wireless Gateway:Provides connectivity between the IT network and a variety of wireless and wired communications networks, including support for WAP, GPRS and short messaging.
• Transcoding:Tailors content to devices based on their unique characteristics such as screen size, graphics capabilities, or storage capacity.
• Message queuing:Helps ensure the completion of transactions once and only once in both connected and disconnected end user scenarios.
• Device, service and subscriber management:Provides content personalization, enrollment, self-care, customer care; and interfaces to external billing systems, reporting, software distribution and updates.
• Synchronization:Allows users to work with applications "off-line" and synchronize the results of their activities with a server database when re-connected to the network.
• Security:Incorporates encryption and authentication, providing a single device-independent user log-on, and pass-through of authentication information to web application servers.
• Scalability:Provides load balancing, fault tolerance and caching to support high level scalability. WebSphere Everyplace Suite Enterprise Edition Version 1.1 runs on AIX and Solaris. It includes two modification levels: Version 1.1.1 (AIX, English) and Version 1.1.2 (AIX, Solaris, English, Japanese).