Calico Lightning Architecture Delivers Breakthrough Scalability and Performance for Global e-Commerce; Calico's eBusiness Application Suite Based on the J2EE Web Standard.

Business/Technology Editors

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

Calico Commerce (Nasdaq: CLIC), a leading provider of eBusiness applications that enable companies to sell over the Web, today unveiled the Calico Lightning Architecture(TM), Calico's next-generation, standards-based eBusiness application platform. The Calico Lightning Architecture is a cross-platform, 100% Pure Java(TM) system built on BEA WebLogic Server,(TM) the market-leading Java application server, offering the most complete implementation of the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE)(TM) standard. Calico's entire product line is built on the Lightning Architecture, providing companies selling products directly over the Web, through existing channels and in Net markets a standards-based platform for their eBusiness strategy. The Calico product suite enables companies to rapidly deploy eBusiness solutions that accelerate revenue growth, lower operating costs, improve customer satisfaction and ultimately build competitive advantage.

With today's announcement, Calico delivers on its strategy to provide best-of-breed eBusiness applications in one standards-based environment. All of Calico's eBusiness applications, including Calico Advisor (see accompanying press release, "Calico Commerce Introduces Calico Advisor(TM); Next Generation Configuration and Recommendation Application for eBusiness"), are based on Calico's Lightning Architecture, which is easily maintainable and provides massive scalability and flexibility in deployment. Calico's applications perform such e-Commerce functions as single and multi-vendor product catalog aggregation, advanced personalization, proactive notification, recommendation, configuration, quoting and order management to enable one-to-one and many-to-many relationships between buyers and sellers. Built on a powerful, J2EE architecture, Calico's application suite enables corporations to rapidly deploy Web site functionality designed to meet the demands of sellers in increasingly buyer driven digital markets.

e-Commerce Sites Require Application Servers for Advanced Scalability

According to the October 1999 Forrester Research report, "Which Commerce Platform?," companies require a commerce platform that supports continuous innovation. "To pick the right product, commerce teams must first ensure that they can evolve their site after launch -- initial speed to market should not come second on the priority list. But firms can have it all by choosing products with strong application servers and tailorable applications."

The Calico Lightning Architecture incorporates the BEA WebLogic Server,(TM) the industry-leading application server based on Java technology which provides support for high transaction volumes and has a proven track record as the foundation of many of the world's most heavily trafficked e-Commerce sites. The Lightning Architecture helps corporations more efficiently integrate Calico's solutions into their existing systems, enables them to leverage the information systems in which they have already invested and brings new e-Commerce applications to market quickly.

"Calico has demonstrated strong leadership among e-Commerce vendors by embracing our open systems implementation of the Java platform. This has resulted in a stunning increase in performance and scalability for Calico, as well as a new and valuable relationship for BEA," said Joe Menard, president of the BEA e-Commerce Server Division. "Calico's Lightning Architecture and scalable e-Commerce applications are helping eBusinesses realize the true benefits of selling products and services over the Web."

Standards-based Architecture Makes eBusiness More Efficient

Calico's standards-based eBusiness application platform provides the flexibility, compatibility and interoperability corporations need to use their technology infrastructure for business gain. The J2EE platform is a scalable platform that can respond to volatility of Web traffic, and facilitates open-standards integration with virtually any legacy application. This enables corporations to develop and deploy best-of-breed solutions based on products and technologies from multiple companies. In addition, Calico's implementation of J2EE fully supports and implements XML, an emerging web standard for data markup that is quickly becoming the standard for e-Commerce data interchange. The powerful combination of Java and XML technologies is enabling a new generation of Web applications in areas such as e-Commerce and enterprise applications integration. Calico customers benefit from XML as it offers an efficient, platform-neutral way to represent content.

"Calico's technical direction is very complimentary to Sun's strategy -- delivering highly scalable e-Commerce applications from a standards-based Java /J2EE platform. Every day, more companies are becoming successful by using the J2EE platforms to deliver their e-Commerce solutions," said Reed Hornberger, senior director of e-Commerce for Sun Microsystems. "By building a modular e-Commerce application suite that plugs into a platform independent Java architecture, Calico's customers can speed up deployment of eBusiness solutions that can be easily customized and extended to create a competitive advantage."

Companies already leveraging the Calico Lightning Architecture include such corporations as ZoneTrader.com. Calico's standards-based e-Commerce solution enabled ZoneTrader.com to get to market fast with a personalized online trading exchange for refurbished and surplus business equipment. Zonetrader.com is taking advantage of Calico's best-of-breed e-Commerce applications to provide customers with guided selling capabilities, a personalized online catalog and the ability to customize business equipment on-line.

"Calico's standards-based Lightning Architecture incorporates the next generation of e-Commerce technology and provides incredible scalability, flexibility and an open platform choice," said Lorie Buckingham, CIO, ZoneTrader.com. "Calico continues to enable us to offer our customers an empowered web selling experience, which is a strategic differentiator for us. Built on a scalable, standards-based architecture, Calico's e-Commerce applications allow us to customize and handle large, complex products, processes and relationships via the Web while helping us maintain our loyal customer base."

About Calico's Lightning Architecture

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

Other key features and benefits include:

-- Massive scalability for global e-Commerce: Calico's J2EE-compliant communications between the business objects within the suite allow distributed applications to scale to meet the needs of large-scale, global applications. For the first time, companies have the ability to deploy highly advanced expert system functionality onto Web sites serving millions of users.

-- Rapid development and deployment: The Calico Lightning Architecture permits companies to use the hundreds of development, maintenance and systems management tools developed for the J2EE environment to work with its suite of products. For example, Calico's J2EE implementation allows developers to choose to build their sites with the tools of their choice from simple HTML authoring tools to full Java development tools.

-- Mission-critical availability: Calico has developed specific technologies that address a variety of business problems, including the high bandwidth configuration and recommendation needs of some of the world's largest B2C web sites. The Calico Lightning Architecture provides an infrastructure to add servers into the site as needs grow or to automatically roll users onto a new server should another fail.

-- Easily maintainable: Calico offers out-of-the-box browser-based tools for "business users" to accomplish tasks such as adding new users, creating user profiles, setting up product families, creating bundles and setting price levels and discounts. In addition, drag and drop modeling tools are available for "commerce engineers," and remote administration tools for data-center and Application Service Provider (ASP) hosted application management are available.

-- Open-standards based integration with other systems and infrastructure: Robust, real-time integration with existing e-Commerce, CRM, ERP and legacy applications is provided via the Calico Enterprise Connectors(TM), middleware-based connectors built around TIBCO, Vitria, and Active Software's EAI products.

"Calico is committed to providing leading corporations with best-of-breed open platform technology along with best-of-breed eBusiness application functionality," said David Cardinal, Chief Technology Officer, Calico Commerce. "With the new Calico Lightning Architecture, Calico is once again staking out a leadership position by adopting the latest in Internet standards and offering a powerful set of eBusiness applications that offer extremely high performance, unlimited scalability, reliability, speed of development and low cost of maintenance."

The Calico Lightning Architecture is the foundation for Calico's technology strategy, as future products will be built on this platform. Current Calico applications which are based on the Calico Lightning Architecture 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

Proven Customer Success

Calico has been successful in providing best-of-breed e-Commerce applications for large enterprises that sell complex products over the web. In addition, dot-com companies are benefiting from Calico's e-Commerce solutions that are turbo-charging their selling channels, resulting in reduced time to market, a compelling customer experience and lasting competitive advantage. Calico currently powers more than 70 enterprise, dot-com and Net market maker eBusiness initiatives, including Motorola, Dell, Qwest, Nortel, General Electric, Kodak, Best Buy, Chemdex, Home Depot, Telia, Winstar, Cabletron, Sunrise Medical, Telxon, Zurn, GrowZone, iCongo.com, edu.com, HomePortfolio, NextMonet, TheAgZone, Exclaim Technologies, OneSwoop.com and Promedix and many others.

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.

Note to Editors: Sun, Sun Microsystem, Java, J2EE, 100% Pure and "the network is the computer" are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.