Brix Networks President and CEO Tom Pincince Named New England Entrepreneur Of The Year Award Finalist.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

CHELMSFORD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 30, 2003

Founder Of Four-Year-Old Service Assurance Firm Selected As One Of The

Region's Top Business Leaders In Ernst & Young Awards Program

Brix Networks (www.brixnet.com), the trusted provider of real-time service assurance solutions for real-time networks, today announced that company president and CEO, Tom Pincince, has been named a finalist for the 2003 Ernst & Young New England Entrepreneur Of The Year Award.

The Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Award honors those leaders whose ingenuity, hard work, and perseverance have created and sustained successful, growing business ventures. Award finalists are typically founders, owners, or managers of private and public companies who are primarily responsible for the recent financial performance of their organizations and are active members of top management.

An independent panel of judges, comprised of business people who have achieved success in their own right, selected this year's finalists from the New England area who are now eligible to win the regional Entrepreneur Of The Year Award in one of several categories to be announced at a banquet at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel, June 26.

In November, New England's award recipients will compete with the winners from other regions across the country for nationwide recognition at the National Entrepreneur Of The Year Conference in Palm Springs, California.

"It is an honor and pleasure to recognize the finalists for their outstanding contribution to New England," said Bryan Pearce, Ernst & Young Venture Capital Advisory group leader and co-host of the 2003 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year Program. "In the face of a challenging business environment, they have displayed exceptional determination and savvy -- and succeeded."

Under Pincince's leadership, the Brix Networks team has developed and brought to market a number of multiple-award-winning hardware and software solutions that have been purchased and installed by numerous leading organizations, representing some of the largest names in the carrier, service provider, and enterprise markets, including: Aetna, AT&T Broadband (now Comcast), Cox Communications, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), Fidelity Investments, ITC DeltaCom, Level 3 Communications, MCI, SBC Communications, Verizon, and Wire One, among others.

Additionally, sales at the four-year-old private company in 2002 increased 58 percent compared with the same period of 2001, the first full year of product shipments.

Prior to starting Brix, Pincince, 39, a veteran of the telecommunications and data networking industries, was the founder of New Oak Communications, a provider of extranet Virtual Private Network switches.

Previously, as an industry analyst, Pincince was director of Forrester Research's Network Strategy Service, where he focused on the commercial use of the Internet, and defined the market for corporate intranets and the possibilities of private data services over the public Internet. Pincince was one of the first high-tech analysts to subsequently leave an industry research and consulting firm to start his own company.

Earlier in his career, he held marketing and engineering positions of increasing responsibility at several Boston-area companies.

Pincince holds a ScB. with Honors from Brown University, where he currently serves on the Advisory Board of the Brown University Entrepreneurship Program.

Since 1986, the Entrepreneur of the Year program has recognized innovative business leaders whose contributions are vital to the success of a region's economic future. The Ernst & Young New England Entrepreneur Of The Year Awards are sponsored locally by the Boston Business Journal, the British Midlands, Citigroup Private Bank, Hale and Dorr LLP, J. Robert Scott, and Marsh.

About Brix Networks

Founded in July 1999, Brix Networks develops and markets real-time service assurance and performance management solutions that verify the quality of advanced, Internet Protocol-based services, such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Virtual Private Networks (VPNs), Web-hosted business applications, and streaming media. The Chelmsford, Mass.-based company's offerings allow carriers, service providers, large enterprises, and government agencies to build, operate, and assure their IP networks and services by providing proactive, end-to-end, service level management (SLM) and service level agreement (SLA) verification. Additional information about Brix Networks can be found on the company's Web site at www.brixnet.com, and by calling 978-367-5600, or 1-888-BRIXNET.

Brix, Brix Networks, the Brix Networks logo, and Brixnet are trademarks of Brix Networks, Inc. All other company or product names mentioned may be trademarks of their respective holders.