CXO Systems Announces $7 Million Series B Financing.

WALTHAM, Mass. -- Ironside Ventures Leads Series B Financing Round With New Strategic Investor Cisco Systems And Continued Participation From Original Investors, GrandBanks Capital and Kodiak Venture Partners

CXO Systems announced today it has secured $7 million in Series B financing. Ironside Ventures led the round with new strategic investor Cisco Systems, Inc. and original investors, GrandBanks Capital and Kodiak Venture Partners.

CXO Systems is the leading business visibility software company designed for CXOs. CXO Systems delivers solutions for specific business problems through its patent-pending composite-based application framework. These solution modules are tailored to managers of outsourcing, research, risk and business operations. With this new round of funding, CXO Systems will continue to aggressively attack the business visibility software space, a key spending priority for IT departments in 2004 and beyond. The funds will support increased product development efforts and sales and marketing expansion as the company continues to roll-out strategic vertical solution modules.

"Ironside Ventures is pleased to lead this round of financing along with previous investors, GrandBanks Capital and Kodiak Venture Partners," said William M. Sheehan, General Partner at Ironside Ventures. "We are extremely impressed by CXO Systems' management team, its incredible market opportunity, and significant and compelling customer adoption. The participation of Cisco shows that the market CXO Systems is attacking is large, the company's technology is solid, and its sales and marketing approach is unique."

CXO Systems addresses a unique market need in a quickly growing market segment -- right time business visibility dashboards. The company's patent-pending technology and industry specific application modules enable companies to gain greater visibility into key performance indicators and easily react to make real positive changes in their businesses. Based on Web services, the product enables companies to implement these applications in less time and with significantly lower costs than typical business intelligence applications and enterprise application integration (EAI) efforts.

"The speed at which this round of financing was raised and the players involved speak to our leadership position in this new category of enterprise software," said Malcolm Frank, CEO of CXO Systems. "Our specific application solutions on top of our patent-pending technology architecture have enabled us to grow customer count over 400% in less than 12 months. We expect even more significant growth in the coming year and look forward to growing with the support of our venture partners."

About Ironside Ventures

Ironside Ventures is a Waltham-based venture capital firm making multi-stage equity investments in rapidly growing companies participating in the communications infrastructure and information technology industries. Ironside has been active in guiding many of its portfolio companies through their growth stages, including initial public offerings and strategic sales. The firm has managed approximately $200 million of capital commitments since its inception.

About GrandBanks Capital

GrandBanks Capital (GBC) is a venture capital firm established in partnership with SOFTBANK and Mobius Venture Capital (SOFTBANK Venture Capital). GrandBanks focuses on making early stage technology investments, primarily in the eastern part of the United States, in companies operating principally in the areas of Internet infrastructure, software and software services, security and storage applications, media technologies and services, financial technologies and services, and wireless technologies and services. With headquarters outside Boston and an office in New York City, GBC possesses extensive experience and expertise in information technology, Internet and communications, media and financial services, and semiconductor technologies, having funded and managed many leading and successful companies. Our portfolio includes Colubris Networks, Coradiant, Inc., CXO Systems, Inc., Ember Corporation, Enpocket, Inc., Glasshouse Technologies, Inc., OutStart, Inc. and, uLocate Communications.

About Kodiak Venture Partners

Kodiak Venture Partners is a Waltham, Massachusetts-based venture capital firm focused on seed and early stage investments in emerging communications/IT, semiconductor and software companies. With a focus in the eastern regions of the U.S. and Canada, Kodiak Venture Partners builds relationships with entrepreneurs seeking accelerated market success. Kodiak's investment partners are successful high-technology business entrepreneurs who take a high-impact, hands-on approach to forming, operating, building and funding market leaders. For more information, visit www.kodiakvp.com.

About CXO Systems

CXO Systems is the leading software provider of specific business visibility solution dashboards. By addressing specific vertical industries and cross-process business applications that are unique to senior managers, CXO Systems helps a large and growing client base make immediate decisions that impact bottom line business results. CXO Systems patent-pending Web Services agent based technology enables data from any data source to be routed and made sense of at 1/8 of the cost and time of traditional software and services providers. CXO Systems is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts with development centers in Sunnyvale, California, and Pune, India. For more information, please visit www.cxosystems.com.