British American Tobacco Selects Peribit to Facilitate SAP Rollout.

Business Editors

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 25, 2003

Global Asset Systems in Australia Sells Peribit SR-50

Solution To Provide Critical WAN Capacity to Remote Pacific Locations

Peribit Networks, the global leader in bandwidth creation products that boost application performance, today announced that British American Tobacco PLC (LSE:BATS) has purchased Peribit Sequence Reducer products for their wide area network.

Peribit's SR-50 products will provide much needed network capacity enabling BAT to easily continue their SAP rollout throughout the Asia-Pacific region. Specifically, the SR-50s increased existing BAT network capacity by 2.5 times, saving over $4,500 per link per month compared to purchasing larger WAN circuits. These savings provide BAT with a hard-dollar ROI of approximately 4 months.

"Rolling out SAP is critical to our business," said Peter Deitz, Technology Manager at BAT. "International circuits are very expensive and critical to managing our widespread pan-Pacific operations. Peribit saves us over $4,500 per month just on our links between Australia and New Guinea. Additionally, the SR-50s are very simple to operate - which is important because it minimizes both my time involvement and travel. The decision only took us six weeks from start to finish - a very easy decision with a convincing ROI."

Since many of the BAT network links were already near capacity, the impending deployment of SAP would cause significant congestion and delay in the network. BAT had already planned to transition from satellite links to more expensive terrestrial links to eliminate the delays inherent in satellite communications. Peribit's SR-50 allowed BAT to stay within the existing 64 Kbps link speed, even with the additional SAP traffic. Therefore not only did the Peribit solution save money, but it also significantly cut response times for end users, especially during peak usage times. BAT had tried using compression in their routers but the additional delay and processing overhead caused other network problems. The Peribit solution also preserved BAT's existing QoS settings to prioritize the SAP traffic over other, less mission-critical data.

"In only 4 months as a Peribit Value-Added Reseller, we have been able to close several new customers including British American Tobacco," said Gordon Anthony, CEO of Global Asset Systems in Australia. "The BAT purchase exemplifies the compelling value proposition for Peribit's products - instant bandwidth to boost application performance with a very strong ROI. Peribit has been an ideal vendor, providing us with the training, materials and support we need to be successful. We anticipate much more business with Peribit going forward."

"Companies like BAT must continue to invest in their mission-critical enterprise applications to compete," said Jef Graham, president and CEO of Peribit Networks. "And at the same time they need to control or decrease expenses. Since WAN costs are frequently a top 3 IT budget expense, they add significant expense to application deployments. Peribit allows companies to deliver mission critical applications over their existing network without the time or expense of a network upgrade."

About British American Tobacco

British American Tobacco is the world's most international tobacco group with over $40 billion in annual sales and operating in more countries than any other. Through 100 years of operations, British American Tobacco has built a strong international reputation for high quality tobacco brands to meet consumers' diverse preferences. Today, they are acknowledged as one of the world's leading Fast Moving Consumer Goods companies.

About Global Asset Systems

Established in 1998, Global Asset Systems (GAS) is a premier supplier it its field of operations. GAS brings to market a range of products that excel in the management and delivery of data across complex infrastructures. GAS provides corporations with real solutions to reduce the cost and complexity of managing their mission critical data. GAS delivers complete IT solutions' from product supply, consulting, professional services combined with comprehensive support services. The GAS client base is dominated by organisations represented throughout Banking, Finance, Insurance, Government, Communications, Distribution and Manufacturing with internationally recognised profiles. Global Asset Systems has operations throughout Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit the company's web site: www.gasystems.com.au

About Peribit Networks

Founded in May 2000, Peribit Networks is now the world leader in bandwidth creation products that boost application performance. Peribit's patent-pending Molecular Sequence Reduction (MSR) technology dramatically improves wide-area network (WAN) performance. The development of MSR marks the first time DNA research techniques have been used to bolster the performance and capacity of IT applications. Peribit has discovered that up to 90 percent of WAN traffic is repetitive data. Using MSR, Peribit's products identify and eliminate repetitive data running over wide area network links, effectively increasing capacity by up to 10 times instantly, without the need for purchasing additional bandwidth. Peribit's products frequently provide a hard dollar ROI in a matter of months. Peribit is the recipient of Network Computing's Companies to Watch designation and Technologic Partners' Investor's Choice Award. A privately held company, Peribit is funded by top-tier investors Accel Partners, Foundation Capital and Mayfield. Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, Peribit has operations throughout North and South America, Europe, Middle East and Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit the company's website at www.peribit.com.

Peribit, Molecular Sequence Reduction, and Peribit Profile Mode are registered trademarks of Peribit Networks