Appliant, Inc. Announces Patent Has Been Allowed For Technology Invented by Founder and CTO; Patent Allowed for Appliant's Unique Application Management Technology.

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 15, 1999--

Appliant, Inc., a manufacturer of enterprise application performance management software, today announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has allowed a patent for technology invented by Brian Bershad, Ph.D., Appliant's founder and chairman, and J. Bradley Chen, Ph.D., Appliant's chief technology officer.

Developed after years of research, this unique technology adds management functionality to commercial software applications. The patent is owned by the University of Washington, where Bershad is Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, and is exclusively licensed to Appliant. The patent will likely be issued later this year.

"This patent validates both the uniqueness and utility of our technology and products," said Alisa Nessler, president and CEO of Appliant. "Appliant is building best-of-breed performance management solutions so that IT professionals can help their companies meet their business objectives."

Bershad founded Appliant to develop products based on innovative technology that respond to the need of IT professionals to understand clearly what's happening across the enterprise. Appliant recently introduced its first product for application management, Appvisor(TM) for Microsoft(R) Exchange. The product monitors Exchange in real time, measures performance and usage at a transaction level, correlates client and server metrics and provides a variety of reports for help desk, service level agreements and performance and usage analysis to provide effective support and assist in planning for growth. Appliant will utilize the same technology to support other enterprise-distributed applications, such as front office and back office automation and Web applications.

"It is very satisfying that this significant research effort has produced a technology that is recognized as a true innovation in application management," said Chen. "I am also pleased that many of the creators of the technology are here at Appliant. We are all committed to applying it to a continuing stream of innovative solutions for the market."

Appliant's products provide precise monitoring and measurement of enterprise applications to deliver a level of information about application performance and usage that is unprecedented. This precision of critical information enables optimum efficiency for troubleshooting, resource allocation, usage profiling, performance management and service level monitoring and support of business-critical applications.

About Appliant, Inc.

Appliant, Inc. develops software products to manage business-critical enterprise applications through a patented technology that provides a precise and detailed view of applications via Appliant's unique Business Activity Profiling(TM). The company's Appvisor(TM) series includes application performance management products for messaging, collaboration and other business-critical distributed applications. Appliant is a privately held, Seattle-based corporation founded in 1997. Visit Appliant at www.appliant.com.

Appliant, Appvisor and Business Activity Profiling are trademarks of Appliant, Inc. Microsoft and Exchange are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.