Browser-based Trading and Risk Management System Pioneers Use of Enterprise JavaBean Technology for Capital Markets.

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 3, 1999--

Capital markets to make transition from build to buy applications; The

heart of Wall Street beats in Internet time 

Integral (www.integral.com), a leading provider of Internet technologies for capital markets applications today announced Integral 4, the first browser-based capital markets trading and risk management system based on Enterprise JavaBeans(TM). The system offers all elements for capital markets computing form front- to back-office and easily integrates with existing applications, allowing for exceptional flexibility and adaptability. Integral 4 enables financial organizations to immediately respond to changing market dynamics, delivering trading and risk management products to global users and the industry's first capital markets XML implementation.

In the last decade, capital markets have witnessed a period of unprecedented change. Waves of deregulation, an increasingly sophisticated customer base, and broad industry consolidation increased the pressure for the financial industry to cut costs and to invent new and more complex financial instruments. Further, substantial investments were necessary to have the IT infrastructure in place to develop modern financial instruments and cut time to market. Initially, the industry responded very effectively with methods such as outsourcing and mergers to improve the economics. Since the mid-90s, Internet technology, and most recently Java(TM)offer new solutions. Integral is pioneering efforts to leverage these capabilities for the capital markets area and to stimulate market development.

Says Harpal Sandhu, CEO of Integral, "As capital markets led the technology transition to client/server, it will lead the transition to the Internet and browser-based applications. Most capital markets applications will be browser based to provide the flexibility and responsiveness required in today's dynamically changing financial markets. Integral has always focused on delivering a time-to-market advantage to its clients, so it's natural that we would be the first to bring Internet technology to mission-critical, capital markets systems."

"Integral is delivering one of the first trading and risk management systems based on Enterprise JavaBeans components," said Rob Hall, vice president, worldwide financial services, Sun Microsystems. "Integral 4 delivers on the vision of browser-based, mission-critical applications for the enterprise. We look forward to working with Integral to provide our financial clients with an Internet applications platform designed to deliver time-to-market advantages."

"HV has a long history of responding to changes in the financial market, delivering new products quickly and efficiently to retain our market leadership position," said Franz Baur, head of IT at HypoVereinsbank. "We believe that Integral 4 will help us to respond in "Internet time" to today's market changes. Integral 4 will enable us to deliver new products faster, to bring remote offices on-line with record efficiency and to reach customers with products and services that solidify our competitive advantage."

Integral 4 is comprised of three main components including the Internet Financial Server, iTrader and FinXML.

Enterprise JavaBeans

Enterprise JavaBeans extends the JavaBeans component model to handle the needs of transactional business applications. JavaBeans is a portable, platform-independent component model written in the Java programming language, developed in collaboration with industry leaders. It enables developers to write reusable components once and run them anywhere - benefiting from the platform-independent power of Java technology. JavaBeans acts as a bridge between proprietary component models and provides a seamless and powerful means for developers to build components that run in ActiveX container applications.

XML

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a standard that allows businesses to communicate over the Internet. It plays a similar role as Hypertext markup language (HTML) does in allowing communication. Whereas HTML gives users a number of tags to define the look of data, i.e. a specific font on a web page, XML provides businesses with the opportunity to create tags that describe the content for a specific piece of information.

About Integral

Integral is the leading provider of Internet technologies for capital markets applications. The company has a proven track record of delivering products that enable financial institutions to leverage technology innovation for market leadership. Today, Integral's products drive competitive advantage for industry leaders including J.P. Morgan, Chase, Citibank, Merrill Lynch and HypoVereinsbank. Leading industry vendors, including IBM, Oracle, Sun Microsystems and Sybase have aligned with Integral to deliver state-of-the-art browser-based trading and risk management solutions to their financial services clients.

Founded in 1993, Integral is privately held. Investors include Accel Partners, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm, www.accel.com. Headquartered in Palo Alto, the company has offices in New York, London and Munich. For more information, visit the Integral Web site at www.integral.com.

Integral 4, Internet Financial Server (IFS), iTrader and FinXML are registered trademarks of Integral. All other trade names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Sun, Sun Microsystems, Java and Enterprise JavaBeans are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.