BBN Technologies Names Alex Laats President of New Division Focused on Commercialization of Advanced Technologies.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- BBN Technologies, a leading provider of advanced technology and research and development (R&D), today announced that Alex Laats will lead the company's new Delta Division. The mission of the Delta Division is to leverage BBN's technology and expertise to generate and manage profitable opportunities in new, large-scale markets. Formerly a co-founder of Informio, Inc. and NBX Corporation, Alex brings significant experience in taking new technologies to market as well as protecting and licensing intellectual property.

"The government and the private sector share many of the same critical challenges, from information security and infrastructure security to search and retrieval of unstructured data," said Tad Elmer, president and CEO, BBN Technologies. "BBN is driving 'state-of-the-art' solutions to these problems that we believe will make a real difference in a wide range of industries today and tomorrow."

A key area for expansion for BBN Delta lies in speech and natural language technology. The company has one of the largest speech and natural language development groups in the country, with over 100 dedicated professionals. The BBN Delta team currently offers the AVOKE product suite, comprised of software and professional services targeting the call center market. The AVOKE products have proven themselves in the most rigorous call center environments, including the customer support center for Verizon Online. As BBN's speech recognition and natural language capabilities continue to improve via government research and development, BBN Delta will expand the AVOKE product suite to bring the benefits of this technology to new markets.

"Over the course of BBN's history, commercial customers have come to us because they want to catch up or leap ahead," said Alex Laats, president, BBN Delta Division. "With the formation of a division with the expertise to bring technology to new markets, we can proactively respond to these opportunities and maximize the potential for our technology."

Prior to joining BBN, Alex was a venture partner at Commonwealth Capital, an early stage venture capital firm, where he specialized in the areas of enterprise information technology and communications infrastructure. Previously, he was president, CEO and co-founder of Informio, Inc., a provider of Voice XML services for large enterprises. Prior to founding Informio, Alex was the chairman, COO and co-founder of NBX Corporation, a manufacturer of VoIP-based business communications systems that was successfully acquired by 3Com Corporation.

Prior to NBX, Alex was a technology licensing officer at MIT, where he was involved with multiple start-up businesses based on MIT technology. Alex started his career as a corporate attorney at Testa, Hurwitz & Thibeault in Boston, and has a J.D. from Harvard Law School and physics and math degrees from MIT.

About BBN

BBN Technologies, an advanced technology and research and development firm, is focused on solving some of the world's most pressing problems. From national security, information security, speech recognition and language translation, to integrating disparate systems and networks, BBN has been at the forefront of technological change for over 50 years.

Known for pioneering the development of the ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet, BBN continues to create advances in Internet and networking technologies through its work on ad-hoc networking, the semantic web, quantum communications, and advanced protocols. Building on its substantial list of firsts, BBN operates the first metro quantum cryptography network, offers the first human surveillance system utilizing ultra wideband technology, the first real-time foreign broadcast monitoring system, and has developed the world's first stereoscopic digital mammography system. For more information, visit BBN.com