Calico Introduces Calico Advisor; Next Generation Configuration and Recommendation Application for eBusiness.

Business/Technology Editors

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 20, 2000

Provides Breakthrough Performance and Scalability,

Powerful New Development Environment

Calico Commerce (Nasdaq: CLIC), a leading provider of eBusiness applications that enable companies to sell over the Web, today announced Calico Advisor(TM), a next generation configuration and recommendation application designed for extremely large-scale e-Commerce sites. Calico Advisor employs next generation "stateless" engine technology -- providing breakthrough performance and scalability. Calico Advisor, the newest addition to the Calico product suite, enables companies to sell complex products direct to customers via the Web, through existing channels and in Net markets to offer their customers the most responsive and reliable guided selling experience available.

In a December 1999 report by Forrester Research, 85 percent of companies believe configuration will become essential to online selling and a critical part of their e-Commerce efforts in 2001. Calico's online configuration offering was ranked number one in market share in 1999, according to ARC Advisory Group. Calico is building on this leadership position with the introduction of Calico Advisor. Based on Calico's standards-based Lightning Architecture, Calico Advisor includes the industry's fastest and most scalable configuration and recommendation engine and a state-of-the-art visual design and development environment. Together these capabilities enable companies to rapidly deploy high-performance guided selling solutions that accelerate revenue growth, increase customer satisfaction and directly drive competitive advantage.

"Calico's best-of-breed Advisor configuration and recommendation application and new Lightning Architecture provide corporations with a more complete e-Commerce solution for selling products directly over the Web, through multiple channels and within Net markets," said Judy Hodges, program director, CRM and ERM applications research, IDC. "Calico offers a broad, standards-based solution, is advanced in its product development and has a well-planned strategy moving forward."

"We are pleased to see the release of Calico's standards-based Advisor application, which will significantly enhance our product customization capabilities and our sales of complex telecommunications solutions," said Ingemar Billstrom, chief information officer, Telia Systems AB, the leading supplier of telecom-based information services in the Nordic/Baltic region. "In addition, Calico's next-generation Lightning architecture will enable us to go to market even faster with our latest offerings, and its ability to scale easily is critical for our future e-Business expansion."

"Calico Advisor's standards-based, scalable architecture offers next-generation e-Commerce applications that are perfectly suited for Global 2000 companies," said Rob Harris, president, Single Source IT, a B2B e-Commerce company that revolutionizes the global IT supply chain for customers, manufacturers, distributors and resellers. "Calico Advisor's ability to scale and support the needs of thousands of online purchasers is very impressive. Moreover, the application offers a flexible, personalized buying process that performs needs analysis and complex customizations that are critical to successful eBusiness."

About Calico Advisor

Calico Advisor is an integral part of Calico's eBusiness application suite. Written 100 percent in Java and designed specifically for high-bandwidth Web sites, it is the only standards-based selling solution designed from the ground up to meet the demands of guided selling on the Internet. Calico Advisor provides a high performance and scalable system for unassisted selling that offers outstanding response even during peak use. Key features include:

-- Calico Lightning Architecture: All of Calico's eBusiness applications, including Calico Advisor, are based on Calico's Lightning Architecture(TM) which is built on the Calico Application Bus(TM), an extension of the J2EE services provided by the BEA Weblogic Server. This pure Java and J2EE-based application server environment, which is embedded in the Calico suite, provides massive scalability, flexibility and a complete platform choice in deployment.

-- Stateless Configuration Engine: At the core of Calico Advisor is a unique, multi-threaded stateless engine -- a breakthrough technology that results in extraordinary performance and scalability due to efficient per user memory management. First generation Java configuration products employ a "stateful" engine technology which requires the allocation of significant amounts of memory for each user on a server. On large scale Web sites the demand for additional memory eventually causes the system to be unresponsive to user inquiries or may even crash the site. Calico Advisor's engine technology does not require any per user memory allocation on the server, and as a result, is capable of scaling to a virtually unlimited number of users without any performance degradation or loss of service. As a result, businesses selling products over the Internet will benefit from best-in-class price/performance.

-- State of the art design and development environment: Designed to meet the needs of commerce engineers and graphic designers, Calico Advisor offers an integrated development environment that separates the business logic and presentation layers of an e-Commerce application. This unique approach greatly reduces the amount of time to deploy an application, as teams can work independently on different parts of the solution. To rapidly build recommendation and configuration functionality for a Web site, commerce engineers use the Calico Visual Modeler, which combines powerful visualization tools, integration with existing customer data and a simple "drag and drop" interface that requires no programming. Graphic designers can use best-of-breed user interface design tools, such as Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft Front Page, to construct a compelling user experience by simply dragging Calico Advisor objects onto custom Web pages.

-- Large Scale Site Development: Calico Advisor provides team development capabilities to meet the needs of customers building large-scale applications. The development environment provides a shared repository for common components and integrates with leading source code management tools such as Microsoft Visual Source Safe and Rational ClearCase.

-- Enterprise-Ready: Applications can be remotely managed and deployed across multiple environments, allowing customers to deploy their applications in-house or hosted via an ASP/ISP. Calico Advisor permits dynamic loading and re-loading of new data and business rules without interrupting users on the site. Full multi-language support permits common business logic to be shared while the application interface is presented in the local language of the end-user. In addition, Calico Advisor applications employ a standard HTML client, and as such, can be accessed by any device with a browser.

-- Security: The Java application server leverages RSA Security's data encryption technology, providing the most secure infrastructure on the Web today. All data is stored in the customer's choice of RDBMS to fully enforce the security mechanisms provided by the native database.

-- Mission-critical availability: Calico Advisor is built on the Calico Lightning Architecture, which provides a wide array of deployment options, ranging from Solaris to Windows NT, with redundancy and failover capabilities at multiple points on the architecture. In addition, new servers can be dynamically added to accommodate spikes in user loads, and the Lightning Architecture will automatically distribute the increase load across all available CPUs.

"Calico Advisor extends our commitment to helping companies, with even the most complex products and services, achieve selling success on the Web," said Alan Naumann, president and CEO of Calico Commerce, Inc. "With Advisor, corporations can offer their customers a compelling buying experience that creates a competitive advantage resulting in increased revenue, lowered operating costs and lasting customer relationships."

Calico Advisor is the newest addition to Calico's full-featured eBusiness application suite designed to provide a complete sell-side e-Commerce solution. Calico Suite products include:

-- Calico Market Maker -- Product catalog, order management and many-to-many Net market maker platform

-- Calico Loyalty Builder -- Advanced personalization and agent-based notification

-- Calico Advisor -- High-performance recommendation and configuration

-- Calico InfoGuide -- Dynamic marketing content repository and presentation

-- Calico Quote -- Aggregate customer information, product and prices for proposals

-- Calico Configurator -- Advanced inference engine and toolset

Pricing and Availability

Calico Advisor will be available on March 31, 2000, as part of Calico's integrated eBusiness application suite. Calico prices its products both standalone and in suite packaging and price points vary depending on the scope of customers' deployments.

About Calico Commerce, Inc.

Calico Commerce, Inc. provides an eBusiness application suite that enables leading corporations to sell products and services via the Web, through existing channels and in Net Markets. Calico's open-standards eBusiness applications match unique customer needs to products to drive revenue growth, increase customer satisfaction and achieve competitive advantage. Calico customers include leaders in high-technology hardware, manufacturing, telecommunications services, financial services, home furnishings, chemicals, agriculture and retail. Calico Commerce, Inc., headquartered in San Jose, Calif., can be found on the World Wide Web at www.calico.com.

Except for the historical information contained herein, the matters discussed in news releases contain forward-looking statements that involve substantial risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed in or implied by such forward-looking statements. Potential risks and uncertainties are described in detail in public reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission such as Calico's Registration Statement on Form S-1 and on Form S-4 in connection with the ConnectInc.com acquisition.