Covalent Technologies Receives SunTone Certification of Enterprise Web Server Products for High Quality Web Content Delivery.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 23, 2001

Covalent Technologies, the leader in products and services for the Apache Web server, today announced that its enterprise Web server products have received SunTone(SM) certification for applications. Under the SunTone Certification and Branding Program led by Sun Microsystems, Inc., Covalent Fast Start Server V 2.0, Covalent Secure Server V1.0 and Covalent SSL V1.5 are now certified as providing high quality of service and meeting industry best practices for Web-based applications.

Because Covalent's products have received SunTone certification, customers can be assured that the products have met the stringent requirements detailed in the SunTone specifications and guidelines and demonstrate high standards for application delivery and service quality.

Led by Sun, the SunTone Certification and Branding program is one of the industry's first collaborative efforts to define and audit service provider infrastructure, operational practices, hardware, applications, and ultimately, overall service delivery. The program is designed to help provide a certain level of performance, security, availability and uptime. The SunTone Certification and Branding Program offers certification in the following three areas: Service Provider (SP) services, hosted applications and integrator services.

"Our enterprise customers often choose Sun and the Solaris(TM) Operating Environment for their hardware and software platforms of choice," said Randy Terbush, chairman and chief technical officer of Covalent. "Receiving SunTone certification helps Covalent communicate to our customers that Covalent products for the Apache Web server are of high quality."

"We are delighted to congratulate Covalent on achieving this certification," said Peter Young, vice president of market development and SunTone Certification for applications at Sun. "When using Covalent's Web server products which have received SunTone certification, customers can be confident that these applications have been evaluated and judged to be reliable and of high quality. Knowing that these applications have received SunTone certification will help boost customer confidence -- it verifies that they are built and managed to leading-edge, industry-based best practices and guidelines."

Covalent has developed Apache solution servers for mission-critical Web sites and enterprise environments. These servers (Covalent Secure Server, Covalent Managed Server and Covalent Fast Start Server) include the key features and functionality that are necessary for Apache to meet the demands of both high-end Web sites and Fortune 500 companies, including Java(TM) technology server capability.

About Covalent Technologies, Inc.

Covalent was founded in 1998 by Randy Terbush, one of the eight developers who originally started the Apache project. Today Covalent is the leader in products and services for Apache. Funded by leading venture capital investors including Sequoia Capital and Granite Ventures, Covalent is the only company offering comprehensive "enterprise-ready" solutions for Apache. Companies such as Lucent Technologies, Dow Jones and others depend on Covalent for their Apache Web server infrastructure. More information about the company can be found at www.covalent.net.

About The SunTone Certification and Branding Program

Launched in May 1999, The SunTone Certification and Branding Program is a collaborative effort with industry-wide support, led by Sun Microsystems Inc., to promote 7-by-24 service and reliability as a norm for consumer and business Internet-based services. Under the SunTone Certification and Branding Program, service providers, independent software vendors and integrators have endured a rigorous specification process which examines the infrastructure, operational practices, hardware, software, and overall service delivery to help ensure that the services or products they provide meet the program's high standards. Certification under the SunTone program is designed to give customers the confidence that every aspect of the operations and infrastructure has been evaluated and judged to be reliable and of high quality. The SunTone Certification and Branding program currently has more than 1500 applicants for certification, including service providers, independent software vendors, and integrators, and over 100 SunTone Certified solutions available to meet a variety of business needs.

Note to Editors: All Covalent product names are trademarks of Covalent Technologies, Inc.

Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun Logo, SunTone, the SunTone certified logo, Solaris and Java are trademarks or registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States and other countries.