Altio Forms Alliance With Sun to Facilitate Rapid Portlet Development, Deployment; AltioLive Portlet Edition Offered on Sun ONE Portal Server.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

BOSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 21, 2003

Altio Inc., a provider of rich-client Internet application solutions, today announced a strategic relationship with Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SUNW) that will include the worldwide bundling of the AltioLive Portlet Edition with the Sun(TM) ONE Portal Server, expected to begin in the first quarter of 2003. AltioLive Portlet Edition, an XML and Java(TM) technology-based development environment, allows Sun ONE Portal Server customers to rapidly create and deploy rich, interactive portlets and "process portals."

"The combination of AltioLive and the Sun ONE Portal Server provides visual tools for building portlets faster to reduce our customers' time to deployment and enable a much broader range of people to develop portlets," said David Bryant, director of business management, Sun ONE Portal Products. "AltioLive's ability to create portlets that can access multiple back-end data sources or automatically communicate with each other anytime key data is changed results in more elegant, dynamic, and intuitive portal interfaces."

The relationship provides a unique portal solution that will allow Sun customers to build what industry analysts such as Forrester Research refer to as 'process portals.' Such portals let users combine data or services from different systems into coordinated processes, in effect offering business process management from within the portal interface and shielding users from the complexity of back-end systems. According to a recent Forrester report, process portals are poised to deliver three key improvements over existing portal solutions: improved usability, increased usage and reduced support.

"Sun and Altio are revolutionizing how businesses use portals by providing end users with the advanced functionality, usability and interactivity they've come to expect from their business applications," said Todd Boes, vice president of marketing, Altio. "We are very excited about this relationship with Sun and to be delivering the next generation of rich Internet application technology to Sun's customers."

"When building portals today, we have to maximize the limited screen space to deliver the most compelling application experience," said Martin Gee, CTO of ICSynergy, a Sun iForce(TM) partner specializing in the seamless design, implementation and deployment of Enterprise Portals. "The combination of AltioLive Portlet Edition and the Sun ONE Portal Server allow us to offer a real-time, personalized, bandwidth-efficient portal experience to our customers that is not available any other way."

In addition, the AltioLive platform also supports the Sun ONE Application Server enabling companies to develop and deploy rich enterprise business applications outside of the portal, running in any browser or personal device that later can be easily tied to portlets built with AltioLive.

For further information on AltioLive Portlet Edition for Sun ONE Portal Server or to see a live demo, visit http://www.altio.com/sunone.

About Altio, Inc.

Altio provides an XML platform for building and deploying real-time, interactive Internet applications. Altio customers gain a competitive edge through a faster development cycle and a dramatically improved user experience. The AltioLive platform brings desktop application functionality to Internet applications, while providing extensibility to multiple devices. With Altio, Internet applications gain unprecedented functionality, scalability and time-to-market. Forrester Research recently named Altio one of the top five companies delivering on the executable Internet.