Battery Ventures, Whitney & Co. and Chase Capital Executives Join Informio Board of Directors; Newly Formed Wireless Web Infrastructure Services Firm to Focus on Enterprise Applications.

Business & Technology Editors

LEXINGTON, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 7, 2000

Informio, a wireless Web infrastructure services firm, announced today that it has expanded its Board of Directors.

Led by CEO and co-founder Alex Laats, Informio's Board now comprises Anthony M. Abate of Battery Ventures; R. Stephen Cheheyl, private investor and consultant; Charles Goldman of Chase Capital Partners; William Laverack, Jr. of Whitney & Co.; and Paul Levine, private investor and consultant.

"In establishing Informio, we felt it imperative to find backers who could provide not only the financial resources but the strategic expertise necessary for a young company like ours," Laats pointed out. "Paul Levine and Steve Cheheyl have been with us since Informio's inception and have been instrumental in helping to set the direction that will establish us as the leading wireless Web infrastructure services firm. With the addition of Tony Abate, Charles Goldman and Bill Laverack, we have created a Board with an exceptional knowledge of the converging telecom and Internet landscape and an established track record for building value over time."

Anthony M. Abate, general partner, Battery Ventures

Abate focuses on telecommunications and Internet services at Battery and he currently serves on the Boards of CBeyond Communications, City Reach International, Novaxess, Looking Glass Networks and Message Blaster. Previously, Abate was a Vice President at Whitney & Co., where he invested in several communications services and Internet companies. He was also an engagement manager at McKinsey & Company, where he focused on telecommunications, cable television and Internet clients. Abate earned a BSE from Duke University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

R. Stephen Cheheyl, private investor and consultant

Since retiring as Executive Vice President of Business Operations of Bay Networks, a $2 billion data networking company, Cheheyl has become a private investor and consultant. His practice specializes in information technology industry mergers and acquisitions, financings, and corporate strategy. Cheheyl was named to Upside magazine's national annual All-Star Team of technology executives. When he served as Senior Vice President of Finance and Administration at Wellfleet Communications, the company was named as America's fastest growing public company for two consecutive years by Fortune magazine. Cheheyl serves on the Boards of four high-tech companies. He earned his undergraduate degree at Dartmouth College and his MBA at Northwestern University.

Charles M.B. Goldman, principal, Chase Capital Partners

Goldman focuses on investments within the communications and technology sectors with an emphasis on wireless and Internet telephony applications. He currently sits on the Boards of USA.net, iWon and Tantau Software. Transactions he has worked on include Triton PCS, TeleCorp PCS and ITXC. Prior to joining Chase, Goldman held positions with the Global Finance Department of Dillon, Read & Co., Inc., and the Consumer Long Distance Division of Sprint. He earned a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, a BS from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

William Laverack, Jr., vice chairman, Whitney & Co.

Laverack oversees Whitney's global telecommunications investment team as well as the firm's activities in Europe. Focusing on the telecommunications industry, including converged voice and data opportunities, Laverack currently serves on the Board of Gabriel Communications and has represented Whitney on the Boards of TeleCorp PCS (TLCP), Pegasus Communications (PGTV), and NBX Corp. (now a division of 3Com). Before joining Whitney, Laverack was with Gleacher & Co., Morgan Stanley and J. P. Morgan. He earned a BA and MBA from Harvard.

Paul Levine, private investor and consultant

Most recently, Levine founded and was CEO of Atria Software, Inc., a venture-financed software company. Atria went public in 1994, and shortly thereafter, merged with Rational Software. Earlier in his career, Levine was with Apollo Computer and Prime Computer. Following Atria, Levine has invested in several private companies, as a private investor or venture partner with Morgenthaler Ventures, including WebSpective (sold to Inktomi), Aptis (sold to Northern Telecom), NBX (sold to 3Com), and BlueGill Technologies (sold to CheckFree Holdings). Levine now works with several private companies offering software and telecom infrastructure solutions. He earned a BS and MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from MIT.

Informio's Business

Informio is the first infrastructure services company to offer voice and audio access from any mobile telephone to business applications on the Internet or corporate Intranets. At the company's launch earlier this month, Laats explained: "Through our global infrastructure, Informio is dedicated to making it effortless for mobile professionals to access and interact with their critical business applications from anywhere, at any time. We are changing the wireless Web from an awkward curiosity to a user-friendly, mission-critical business requirement that is driven by voice and audio technology."

Informio's technology - the Unified Media Browser(TM) - is a highly reliable, scalable and distributed architecture that delivers Internet audio, voice and text applications to any telephone. It is currently in trial with distribution partners such as wireless carriers and enterprise customers.

The Unified Media Browser architecture is composed of best-of-breed technologies, and based on VoiceXML, WML and other standards, which allows any organization to develop Internet text, audio and voice applications. These are then outsourced to Informio for hosting and/or delivery, providing an open, reliable and cost-effective solution for organizations to deliver worthwhile Internet content to their mobile constituents.

About Informio

Informio (www.Informio.com) is a Lexington, MA-based wireless Web infrastructure services company. By bringing together the open Internet with the historically proprietary telephone network, Informio enables voice and audio access from mobile devices to business applications running on the Internet or corporate Intranets.

Informio and Unified Media Browser are trademarks for Informio, Inc., and may be registered in certain jurisdictions. All other trademarks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners.