Business Marketing Group 'BMG' Establishes Leadership, Creating Essential Business Relationships between Technology Vendors and Partner Organizations.

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 12, 1998--

BMG's FusionPlan delivers proven methodology for high tech

companies to quickly establish strategic relationships, enabling new

market penetration and increasing shareholder value

Business Marketing Group, Inc. (BMG), the high-technology industry's premier independent strategic partnership development firm, Thursday introduces the industry to FusionPlan(TM), a unique business relationship framework and methodology designed to forge comprehensive, mutually beneficial business partnerships between industry leaders.

BMG's FusionPlan facilitates strategic engineering, sales, marketing, and business development agreements, helping both partners to penetrate new markets effectively, gain competitive advantage, reduce time to market with critical solutions, and increase shareholder value.

Founded in 1996, BMG is the industry's first independent business development firm, and is the proven leader in forging alliances between high technology companies. With FusionPlan, BMG consistently creates deep, multi-faceted relationships in less than half the time that they could be established organically.

"BMG has been a valuable resource to Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) that are interested in developing relationships with Microsoft at various levels," says Tim Kraus, Program Manager for Windows Systems Management. "The fact that BMG currently represents ISVs as an outsource business development desk to forge working relationships with Microsoft should be very attractive to vendors that have significant technology, but no path to enter into a relationship with our teams."

BMG, through the FusionPlan program, facilitates alliances between large and small companies that may have previously attracted little attention. Examples of BMG-facilitated partnerships include:

-- Microsoft, SAP and Commerce One - BMG eliminated six to nine

months from the development time of the relationship between

Commerce One and Microsoft that included a joint development

agreement and direct sales efforts. BMG then leveraged the

Microsoft relationship to create another strategic

relationship between Commerce One and SAP that included

investment funding.

-- Cirrus, IBM and @fax - BMG forged a relationship between

Cirrus and @fax that provided @fax with support and funding

for the production of its initial hardware design and

development. BMG then leveraged this relationship to

establish another between @fax and IBM for additional

development and distribution.

-- Microsoft and OnDisplay - BMG established OnDisplay as the

only provider of data parsing technology for Microsoft's

Site Server platform, and established OnDisplay within three

other strategic areas for Microsoft.

"It is virtually impossible to win in today's competitive environment without the leverage of partnerships with industry-leading companies," said Sarah Gerdes, BMG president and CEO. "In the past two years, we have applied our proven methodology to bring together companies from numerous segments of the industry. These alliances result in better products, marketshare gains, and strategic competitive advantages.

"Because we have a macro view of the companies and the industry, and can remain focused on potential intersection points, we are able to deliver the business benefits of partnering more quickly, comprehensively and cost-effectively than an internal group or individual consultant can."

BMG is able to facilitate new relationships expeditiously through the combination of its FusionPlan process for defining business synergies, qualifying business opportunities, targeting appropriate internal and external executives, and delivery of services that enable deals to be completed quickly and effectively.

The process is designed to allow companies to quickly and cost-effectively create deep, multi-faceted relationships with partner companies, resulting in greater business return, lower cost of partnership and faster time to desired results. In most cases, BMG is able to reduce the time to partnership from 18-24 months to less than six months.

"As small companies come to market with new products, it is essential that they have appropriate strategic relationships which help them attain market presence," said Kevin Armitage, senior vice president, FAC/Equities, a leading Bay Area technology investment bank that works closely with start-ups and the venture capital community.

"The core competencies of these companies tend to be on the technical side. BMG provides them with what they need - mindshare and distribution channels - by offering what they don't have in the areas of business development, resources, relationships and experience.

"Not only does BMG offer access to the right individuals in the right companies and organizations, they also offer a streamlined process for creating the desired partnerships. Their service brings an important and unique element to the industry."

BMG builds upon its relationships with technology leaders to forge partnerships with leaders in other industries. Examples include entertainment companies who require partnerships with technology companies, leaders in vertical markets who rely on technology, and industry associations who comprise end users of technology.

BMG has built relationships with powerhouse business platform provider Microsoft, and Tivoli Systems for strategic applications management. BMG has relationships with ERP providers Peoplesoft and SAP, hardware providers IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Compaq, and chipset vendors Intel and Cirrus.

About BMG

BMG is a San Francisco based marketing consultancy specializing in the development of strategic partnerships for technology-based clients and other complementary organizations.

BMG is the first organization to successfully create, implement and promote a methodology for the development of partnerships. This program - FusionPlan- was originally introduced for Microsoft in March of 1996. Since that time, FusionPlan(TM) has been used by BMG to create relationships between technology-based product/services companies including Microsoft, SAP, KPMG, Anderson, Intel, and IBM, among others. For more information, visit the BMG web site at www.bmginc.com.

FusionPlan is a trademark of BMG.