CONNECT, Inc. Joins with Rational Software, Marimba and Cognos on CONNECT Application Workbench; First-to-Market with Comprehensive Development Toolset for Electronic Commerce Applications.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 11, 1997--CONNECT, Inc. (NASDAQ:CNKT), the leading provider of end-to-end, business- to-business electronic commerce applications announced today the CONNECT Application Workbench, a suite of industry-standard software tools to automate lifecycle management for its electronic commerce applications.

The CONNECT Application Workbench will provide OrderStream(TM), PurchaseStream(TM) and OneServer(TM) customers with the only complete solution to easily design, develop, deploy and monitor high end web-based applications.

The CONNECT Application Workbench will include five components: CONNECT Operations Monitoring tool for observing server and site performance, CONNECT Site Manager for loading new objects and making modifications to an electronic commerce application, CONNECT Object Designer which features extensions to Rational Software's Rational Rose Visual Object Modeling Tool, CONNECT ACE, an application component environment based on Marimba's Bongo Java-based visual interface builder and CONNECT Reporting and OLAP Tools based on Cognos' PowerPlay Online Analytical Processing (OLAP) and Impromptu desktop reporting tools. The CONNECT Application Workbench will be available at a nominal fee for all CONNECT applications.

"A key requirement for an industry-leading packaged application is the ability to provide a complete development environment for managing all phases of application deployment and shortening implementation time," said Bart Foster, executive vice president, sales and marketing, CONNECT, Inc. "With our new Application Workbench, CONNECT's applications will be the only true end-to-end electronic commerce solution. We chose to base portions of the Workbench with tools from Rational, Marimba and Cognos because they are the recognized standards in their respective markets, and will provide CONNECT customers with standards-based, industry-leading functionality and performance."

The CONNECT Application Workbench consists of a suite of five components along with the existing CONNECT Template Engine which allows CONNECT applications to dynamically generate HTML with leading tools:

CONNECT Object Designer: Visual Repository of Web-Based Application Objects in Rational Rose

CONNECT will provide a bi-directional extension to Rational's award-winning Rational Rose Visual Object Modeling tool, allowing users to forward- and reverse-engineer applications based on CONNECT products. Based on the highly successful Unified Modeling Language (UML), developers and integrators will be able to extend CONNECT business objects through a drag-and-drop interface, and automatically generate the necessary object definitions that are then loaded into the application. In addition to providing an excellent repository of objects and design plans, Rational Rose enables multiple users to concurrently develop the application design.

"We are pleased that CONNECT has chosen Rational Rose to be the visual modeling front end to their suite of electronic commerce applications," said Roger Hodskins, vice president of business development at Rational. "CONNECT joins a growing number of companies in realizing that visual modeling is essential to enterprise and Internet development. We look forward to working closely with CONNECT and their customers."

CONNECT Site Manager: Application Content Loading and Staging

Also included as a standard feature of the Workbench, CONNECT's Site Manager allows for quick modification of data within the application. Application components can be loaded and replaced with a simple one-button process. Unlike simple ftp tools, the Site Manager can incrementally load all application content, including object definitions created with the Object Designer, HTML templates, graphics, application code and application setup data. The Site Manager can further be used to load application revisions between a staging server (where new versions of the application can be tested and debugged) and the production server.

CONNECT Operations Monitoring Console: Observing Back-End Performance

Included as a standard feature in the Application Workbench, CONNECT's HTML- and Java-based operations monitoring tool provides an easy-to-use, reliable method for observing the performance of the Web site. Users will have the ability to monitor critical areas of server performance, pinpointing bottlenecks and predicting future load requirements. The Operations Monitoring Console observes all facets of application performance, including database response times and queues, load balance statistics, query response time and average download time per page. This tool provides both real-time and historical perspectives, allowing administrators to gauge not only short-term performance characteristics, but long-term trends in site load and performance. Unique Java applets provide charting and threshold monitoring, and visually alert any unusual performance characteristics.

CONNECT ACE(TM): Application Component Environment for Java

CONNECT ACE is a set of widgets and components for Marimba's Bongo visual interface builder for Java. These interfaces are ready for immediate use, enabling rapid development of rich, interactive user interfaces. Developing and modifying Java-based interfaces to either OrderStream or back-office applications greatly reduces coding requirements, and significantly increases the reusability of these objects. Forms that are created for business objects are stored as components and can be re-used to create even more powerful applications and applets in a fraction of the time.

"CONNECT ACE leverages two of the technology's key strengths: ease of use and reusability of code," said Dave Cope, vice president of marketing, Marimba, Inc. "The combination of Marimba's Bongo and CONNECT ACE allows less technical developers to modify their electronic commerce applications on-the-fly as their businesses change, preserving programmers' time for more complex projects."

CONNECT Reporting and OLAP Tools: Gathering Business Intelligence

CONNECT has developed reports for OrderStream that plug in to the award-winning PowerPlay OLAP tool and Impromptu desktop reporting tool from Cognos, Inc. To accurately measure the return on investment of an electronic commerce application, site managers must have the ability to gather intelligence about the behavior and buying patterns of visitors to the Web site. The extension to PowerPlay provides drill-down and slice-and-dice capabilities and presents analysis of online customer purchasing trends through an easy-to-use graphical interface. The extension to Impromptu provides powerful standard and ad hoc reporting of purchasing data through a Windows interface.

"OLAP and reporting tools are critical to accurately understanding what separates a successful electronic commerce site from an unsuccessful one," said Paul Hill, director of business alliances, Cognos, Inc. "Through our partnership, we can provide the essential visual information Web marketers and business managers need to better understand business activity on their Internet applications."

Pricing and Availability

CONNECT's Application Workbench is priced at $5,000 per application for an unlimited number of users. It will be available as an option with the releases of OrderStream 2.0 and OneServer 2.5, both due in September. CONNECT's Application Workbench will also be sold separately at a similar price to existing CONNECT OneServer 2.0 customers. The third-party applications themselves will be available directly from Rational, Marimba and Cognos respectively or through their authorized resellers.

About CONNECT, Inc.

CONNECT designs, develops, markets and supports enterprise application software for electronic commerce. The Company's software applications, OneServer, OrderStream and PurchaseStream, allow global companies to automate order capture, build customer intimacy and streamline distribution and supply chain processes.

CONNECT's end-to-end software solutions are designed to reduce the time and overall cost for businesses to implement and maintain a secure and industry-standard sales, marketing and order capture capability on the World Wide Web to support large numbers of customers, products and transactions. These solutions reduce costs, increase market share, improve customer satisfaction and enhance supply chain visibility. For more information, telephone [phone] or access the CONNECT World Wide Web site at http://www.connectinc.com .

About Rational Software Corporation

Rational Software Corporation (NASDAQ:RATL) develops, markets and supports a comprehensive solution that automates the component-based development of software. Rational's solution includes an integrated family of products that automate development and quality assurance throughout the software lifecycle, a software process that can be configured to the specific needs of customers, and a range of consulting and support services. For more information on Rational's products and services, visit Rational's Web site at http://www.rational.com .

About Marimba, Inc.

Marimba, Inc. is a privately-held software company whose products enable developers to create, deploy and maintain robust network-managed applications and services within enterprises and across the Internet. The company was founded in February 1996 by four members of the original Java development team at Sun Microsystems, including Jonathan Payne, Kim Polese, Sami Shaio and Arthur van Hoff. Marimba received its initial round of venture funding from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

About Cognos, Inc.

Cognos is the global leader in providing business intelligence software to satisfy enterprise-wide data access and analysis needs. With over 470,000 copies of these products in thousands of companies worldwide, PowerPlay and Impromptu consistently service the widest range of users across corporate, departmental, workgroup, personal, intranet and mobile applications. The products support over 100 relational and OLAP data sources, and are available in seven major languages. Cognos business intelligence products can be purchased from Cognos regional offices and more than 800 resellers around the world.

Cognos develops, markets and supports - both directly and through resellers worldwide - software tools for business intelligence, and application development on a wide range of open and proprietary computing platforms. Cognos is a publicly held company with corporate headquarters in Ottawa, Canada, and sales headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Cognos' World Wide Web address is http://www.cognos.com .

Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in this news release are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. Potential risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, those mentioned in the Company's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 1996 and the Company's ability to implement its products, acceptance by the marketplace of the Company's products and services and the Company's ability to develop new products and services. -0-

Note to Editors: OneServer, OrderStream, PurchaseStream, StatusMinder and the Virtual Sales Channel are trademarks of CONNECT, Inc. CONNECT is a registered service mark of CONNECT, Inc. Bongo is a registered trademark of Marimba, Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective holders.

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