Catholic Education Office -- Parramatta Deploys Volera Content Delivery Network Solution; Students and Staff Benefit From Enhanced Access to Online Educational Resources.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 30, 2002

Volera Inc., the leading provider of content networking software solutions and a subsidiary of Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq:NOVL), today announced that the Catholic Education Office -- Parramatta, serving western Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, selected Volera's Velocity CDN as a platform to enhance the delivery and access of Web content to about 45,000 students and staff at 71 schools on 75 sites located throughout Western Sydney and the Blue Mountains.

The Catholic Education Office (CEO) Diocese of the Parramatta needed to provide students and staff with fast and reliable access to online educational resources, but its network infrastructure was not sufficient to meet the needs of a growing student population accessing bandwidth-intensive Web content, such as audio, video and images. In addition to latent network performance, the CEO experienced a significant increase in bandwidth requirements and costs, nearly tripling each year.

"With the amount of student and staff accessing online educational resources, the network just didn't deliver. The spikes in demand during the day were causing significant performance degradation, hindering students and staff from getting the resources they needed," said Shane Wharton, information technology unit manager for the CEO. "With the problem intensifying and bandwidth costs growing, the CEO selected Volera's Velocity CDN as its platform to provide greater access and quality of service for its users, as well as reducing network costs, all while the user base and school system continues to grow."

According to the CEO, it selected Volera's Velocity CDN solution over other proposed solutions because it greatly improves student and staff access to educational Web content critical to their success in school. By accelerating content and reducing Web page loading time, Volera is able to deliver faster access and quality of service to all students and staff on the network. The same platform enables the CEO to deliver all types of content and applications, such as streaming video in the future, a growing trend in educational content that poses a heavy burden on the network. Finally, the complete management suite offered as a component of Volera's Velocity CDN solution provides CEO with the ability to centrally administer the 75 points of acceleration and proactively preposition frequently accessed content closer to the end users for better bandwidth utilization and efficiencies.

"The CEO selected Volera not only for its assessed technical and performance superiority, but its ability to meet all of our needs. From the software-based solution deployed on our Intel based server platform and central management to training and maintenance, Volera Velocity CDN was the complete solution that the CEO required," said Wharton. "With Volera's management suite, we now have the ability to make better use of our limited IT staffing resources. The CEO expects to see a return on its investment within 18 to 24 months given the significant increase in performance and functionality, along with the associated bandwidth savings."

Volera offers a complete Content Delivery Network (CDN) platform, including acceleration, streaming, management and security that scales with the amount and complexity of Web content and applications over a network. As major school systems like the CEO deploy rich media and streaming content, Volera's software solution enables the infrastructure to support the delivery of all types of Web HTTP content, media, files and applications across multiple locations on the existing network. The management component of Volera Velocity CDN enables the CEO and schools' IT staff to easily deploy, configure and manage its CDN all from a central location. Volera Velocity CDN also enables school systems to integrate and centrally manage content filtering solutions that help students and staff avoid unwanted Web content.

"The CEO's utilization of Volera's Velocity CDN demonstrates the value of Volera's content networking solutions to support the intelligent management and delivery of rich and streaming content in educational environments," said Rajeev Mitroo, general manager of Volera Asia-Pacific. "Volera's extensible CDN platform will allow the students and staff of CEO to experience a richer, faster Web experience that helps them achieve their academic pursuits."

About Catholic Education Office -- Parramatta

The Catholic Education Office provides services to all Catholic schools within the Diocese of Parramatta and is the administrative centre of Catholic systemic schools in the diocese. The Catholic Education Office facilitates the functioning of the whole educational enterprise, helping school communities to achieve their goals in a variety of ways, through the services offered by each department and its personnel. The Parramatta Diocese is located in one of the fastest growing areas of New South Wales. The diocese is west of Sydney and reaches from Dundas, west to Katoomba, south to Luddenham and north to Windsor. The demand for Catholic education continues to grow in the region and each year an average of one new Catholic school opens. There are 71 systemic schools in the diocese (51 primary and 20 secondary). The total student population is around 41,000 students. There are also six congregational schools in the diocese. More information about the school system is available from the CEO's website: http://www.ceo.parra.catholic.edu.au.

About Volera

Volera, Inc. delivers content networking software solutions that reduce the complexity and cost of deploying content and applications while improving scalability, management and security. Enterprises and service providers can utilize Volera's Velocity CDN software platform as a content-aware network foundation for the deployment of next-generation business applications and streaming media applications such as e-learning and Webcasting for corporate communications. Volera's solutions are designed to integrate with current networks. Volera's customers include American Airlines, AT&T, City of Stockholm, CNN, Datek Online, Pharmacia, Southwest Airlines, TeleWest, UniSuper, United Airlines, University of North Texas, Watson Wyatt and many more. Volera Inc. is a subsidiary of Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq:NOVL) with a strategic investment from Nortel Networks and equity participation from Accenture. More information on Volera can be found at http://www.volera.com.