Convera Launches RetrievalWare 8, Scalable Knowledge Discovery Platform for Large Enterprises and Government Agencies.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

VIENNA, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 13, 2003

Categorization and Dynamic Classification Software Delivers New End-User Capabilities for Search, Navigation and Discovery

Convera (Nasdaq:CNVR) today announced the commercial availability of RetrievalWare(R) 8, a new knowledge discovery platform that helps large organizations automate their knowledge management and discovery processes using an infrastructure that can be optimized for specific industry and government agency applications.

RetrievalWare 8 integrates Convera's proven scalable enterprise search with industry-specific taxonomies and new categorization and dynamic classification software, delivering powerful techniques for searching, navigating and discovering knowledge, including hidden relationships, patterns and trends. With RetrievalWare 8, customers now have a single integrated platform that categorizes and organizes all content including unstructured text, image, video and paper assets, in addition to a variety of structured data sources.

Using Convera's dynamic classification software, end users can launch a search and automatically classify the results based on pre-defined or dynamically generated classifications made possible through the combination of multiple taxonomies. These taxonomies can consist of Convera's pre-packaged industry taxonomies, customer-defined taxonomies or custom taxonomies supplied by Convera's Taxonomy Development Partners. By combining these classifications "on-the-fly," end users are able to isolate and discover critically relevant information that existing search and categorization software cannot uncover.

According to Mark Walter of The Seybold Report: "RetrievalWare raises the bar in categorization. Convera has made impressive strides in its categorization and classification techniques. There are new tools for importing, creating and editing taxonomies, a new categorization engine and impressive display options for end users. This is the first system we've seen that lets users mix and match taxonomies in their search results, even to the point of showing search results classified in a table along two user-definable axes at once (for example, show me the search hits by topic and geography)."

Gartner, Inc. has recognized Convera as a leading Visionary in Gartner's newly released 2003 Search Engine Magic Quadrant report, which measures vendors' Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute. According to the report, Convera has "maintained a considerable flow of new customers and continues to provide remarkable scale and a variety of critical features."

In response to requirements of large enterprise customers, RetrievalWare 8 supports cost-effective interoperability with a broad range of enterprise applications through J2EE and .Net Web services support, provides new security capabilities and delivers easy-to-use administration and management tools for large scale deployments.

Select early adopters of RetrievalWare 8 include the Federal Bureau of Investigation, offices within the US Department of Defense, US Department of Energy, US Navy, UK Ministry of Defence, numerous members of the worldwide Intelligence Community, and leading companies within the pharmaceutical and financial industries.

Convera has also certified ten partners as part of its new Taxonomy Developer Certification Program. Companies certified in the development and deployment of custom taxonomies and classifications using RetrievalWare 8's Categorization and Dynamic Classification solution include Access Innovations, Advanced Technology Systems (ATS), Bleuphish, Creative Technology Inc., IBM (NYSE: IBM), KAPS Group LLC, Mitre, MZM Inc., SRA International Inc. (NYSE: SRX) and Veridian (NYSE: VNX).

About Convera

Convera is a leading provider of mission-critical enterprise search and categorization solutions. Convera's RetrievalWare solutions maximize return on investment in vast stores of unstructured information by providing highly scalable, fast, accurate and secure search across more than 200 forms of text, video, image and audio information, in more than 45 languages. More than 800 customers in 33 countries rely on Convera's search solutions to power a broad range of mission-critical applications including enterprise portals, knowledge management, intelligence gathering, profiling, corporate policy compliance, regulatory compliance, customer service and more. For more information, contact Convera at 800-788-7758, via e-mail at [e-mail] or on the Web at www.convera.com ( http://www.convera.com ).

This release, including any statements from Convera personnel, contains statements about Convera's future expectations, performance, plans, and prospects, as well as assumptions about future events. The reader is cautioned not to put undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, as these statements are subject to numerous factors and uncertainties, including without limitation, business and economic conditions and trends; continued success in technological advances; possible disruption in commercial activities caused by terrorist activity and armed conflict, such as changes in logistics and security arrangements; reduced customer demand relative to expectations; competitive factors; and other risk factors listed from time to time in the company's SEC reports. Actual results may differ materially from our expectations as the result of these and other important factors relating to Convera's business and product development efforts, which are further described in Convera's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These filings can be obtained from the SEC's website located at www.sec.gov. Any forward-looking statements are based on information available to Convera on the date of this release, and Convera assumes no obligation to update such statements.

The Convera design logo and the following are worldwide trademarks of Convera: Convera(TM), RetrievalWare(R), and Screening Room(R). The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.