Commercial Open Source Solution Provider Continuent Announces Launch and $5.75 Million Round of Funding.

EMERYVILLE, Calif. -- Company Expands Industry-Leading High Availability Database Solutions With Support from Investment Firms Trident Capital, Nordic Venture Partners and Ledstiernan

Continuent, the leading provider of commercial open source middleware solutions for database high availability, today announced its launch of an expanded product line and a $5.75 million series B round of funding to support its global growth.

Continuent was formerly known as Emic Networks, an Emeryville, CA-based provider of high availability solutions for MySQL(R) databases. The company with 45 employees worldwide maintains its headquarters in Emeryville and research labs in France and Finland. Continuent is redefining high availability and scalability with its new database virtualization technology that works with all major databases - open source or commercial.

"The launch of Continuent and our expanded open source-based product line reflects our evolution from a provider of high availability for a limited market to a provider of solutions for virtually any enterprise," said Continuent CEO Eero Teerikorpi. "We have witnessed an enormous surge in demand for high availability solutions as data has become the most coveted asset in the enterprise. Until now, the industry has lacked a solution with the flexibility to address the widest range of enterprises. With our expanded product offering, Continuent is the first to accommodate this need and capitalize on this massive market opportunity."

Continuent also announced today that it has closed a $5.75 million Series B round of funding, led by investment firms Trident Capital, Nordic Venture Partners and Ledstiernan. This round of funding, coupled with earlier investments, brings Continuent's total equity investment to date to $15.75 million.

"We are enthusiastic about investing in a company like Continuent, with its clear vision for what the industry needs and an equally clear path for capitalizing on it," said Donald R. Dixon of Trident Capital. "We fully expect demand for products like Continuent's to grow in popularity in the near future. Enterprises in categories as diverse as telecom, banking and online retail require the highest level of dependability to service rapidly expanding customer bases. Continuent, with its flexible options, is best positioned to satisfy these needs."

Continuent's plans are to use the latest round of funding to support expanded marketing and sales and product development initiatives. The company continues to grow in the US, France and Germany, among other regions, where major customers in the telecommunications, financial services and e-commerce sectors have adopted its products. A portion of the new investment will fund growth in these markets, as well as an enhanced presence in the United Kingdom.

"How2Share Technologies has based part of our scalability plan on the technology that Continuent's p/cluster provides," said Pucky Loucks, senior systems architect, How2Share Technologies Inc. "We have been working closely with Continuent and its architects as key contributors and users. We look forward to Continuent's success and are committed to the solution."

Funds will also support expanded product development as Continuent evolves its flexible middleware solutions. This will include incorporating components of code developed by the open source project, Continuent.org. Continuent.org was launched in October to host a number of projects related to providing an open source solution for high availability and scalability. Its mission is to provide a deep framework for solving the issues of high availability and scalability often associated with databases and that can be used in a heterogeneous database environment or tailored to a specific database.

Forrester estimates that the current open source database market -- comprising new licenses, support, and services -- is about $120 million; this figure is likely to grow to more than $1 billion by 2008 (Open Source Databases Come Of Age, Forrester Research, Inc., December 2004).

According to Senior Analyst Noel Yuhanna in his September 2005 Forrester Research report, The Future of DBMS Technology, managing performance and scalability is one of the top database-related challenges for enterprises. He notes, "IT is often under pressure by business groups to deliver improved response time for critical applications. Scaling databases to support unlimited numbers of users has always been a challenge, and this issue continues to grow as the Internet connects more users to data."

In today's fast changing business environment, enterprises want to gain greater efficiency from their IT investments. Businesses are challenged with the need to lower IT expenditures, improve staff productivity and reduce costly downtime to remain competitive. With Continuent and its new open source-based solutions, enterprises can build a powerful data center with a variable cost structure that can be adjusted as needed.

Teerikorpi said, "You can spend more time thinking about how to run your business, knowing that Continuent's flexible solutions provide the reliable and scalable performance that your applications need, regardless of the database. This represents freedom of choice and significant cost savings."

About Continuent

Continuent ensures business continuity for the enterprise. With flexible solutions that deliver data availability and scalability, Continuent guarantees customers' peace of mind and lets them focus on running a successful business. Continuent's industry breakthrough middleware works with all major databases. Through the use of database virtualization technology, Continuent solutions even support heterogeneous database environments. Continuent products are compatible with a wide variety of hardware, operating systems and application environments. Continuent is headquartered in Emeryville, CA, with research labs in France and Finland. For more information, please visit www.continuent.com.

MySQL is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the USA and other countries. Other products mentioned may be trademarks of their respective corporations.