D2K, Inc. Revolutionizes Integration of Data and Applications; Company's New Software Taps the Web's Latent Power to Make Money.

Business Editors and Technology Writers

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 19, 2000

Unique Networking Solution Uses Distributed Routers -- Not Hubs -- to

Integrate Diverse Databases and Applications with Minimal Time,

Trouble and Expense

A new chapter in networking opened today when D2K(TM), Inc, based here and in Singapore, launched a revolutionary invention that exploits the Internet's untapped commercial possibilities and transforms the technology for integrating and moving data.

The software company's Information Logistics Network (ILN(TM)) lets developers of Web-driven services shorten their time-to-market by quickly integrating disparate databases and applications across and beyond the enterprise. From anywhere in the world, ILN can automatically and dynamically program its intelligent, software-based routers with business rules to enable customers such as electronic exchanges to create virtual networks simply and flexibly.

Invented by D2K on its way to winning six patents, with a seventh pending, the product exploits the Web and interconnects such applications as ERP, SCM, EAI etc. The solution also bridges mainframes to open servers and relational databases such as Oracle and IBM's DB2 to their non-relational counterparts. D2K thus accommodates multiple forms of e-commerce and ties the old economy of legacy systems to the new economy of electronic business.

"ILN constitutes nothing less than a fundamentally different order of network that fulfills the Web's business-generating potential by clearing the technological roadblocks that once kept unlike systems from sharing data," said D2K's CEO William Seagrave. "The product's three components run on standard digital networks, operate at the database and applications levels and support most existing technologies."

D2K's announcement comes at a time when a growing patchwork of conflicting, multi-vendor technologies ranks as perhaps the most serious inhibitor to the Internet's continued commercial development. None of today's dissimilar machines, operating systems, databases or strategic applications originated with a grand master plan for how they all would ultimately fit and work together. So to integrate them invariably demands a heavy investment in IT spending, time, scarce technical talent and execution attention.

Streamlines Integration Projects

ILN greatly eases the drain on resources by streamlining integration projects and their requirements for skilled labor and by freeing executives to concentrate on core business issues. Moreover, early experiences with the Return on Integration Investment methodology, a D2K-created tool for quantifying the product's business benefits, have already shown ILN to boost integrators' efficiency by 50%. In short, the architecture saves four key non-renewable assets -- money, time, people and management focus.

"Because of ILN's tremendous potential to reduce the cost of networking different vendors' products, we expect D2K to give us a competitive edge in our domestic markets," said Seiichi Morimoto, Assistant General Manager of the Information & Telecommunications Business Dept. of Sumitomo Corporation, one of D2K's investors.

Eliminates Bottlenecks and Single Points of Failure

ILN's many benefits spring from its unique architecture, built around Intelligent Information Logistics Routers (IILRs) that communicate point to point over virtual networks and so eliminate hubs and their associated performance bottlenecks and single points of failure. The solution's accent on distributed IILRs, implemented in software rather than in hardware, contrasts with the hub-centered designs of ILN's claimed alternatives and marks its creator as information logistics networking's thought leader.

"D2K offers the purest form of ILN, including intelligent routers, business rule managers and network monitoring," according to META Group. "Unlike others, D2K does not impose hub-and-spoke data staging -- which, while ideal for data warehousing, is often unsuitable for high-performance, low-latency data mobility."

Installed on every node a customer chooses to interconnect, D2K's IILRs provide native interfaces to most standard hardware platforms, operating environments, databases, enterprise applications and data types. Heterogeneous implementations of IT, therefore, can interact freely in more than 7,000 combinations to create networks that their users can deploy with little or no expensive custom programming.

D2K views ILN as the universal integrator for all databases and applications and for all internal and external communications with an organization's customers, suppliers and partners. Another way to think of the product is as the glue that binds technological "tiles" of varying origins, sizes and shapes into a mosaic of automated functionality.

Serves Multiple Missions

Besides its IILRs, ILN consists of two other program modules -- an Information Logistics Network Manager and an Information Logistics Application Manager. Together, the three elements permit the implementation of multi-purpose networks. D2K's software, for example, can act as the architectural backbone for system integrators, application services providers (ASPs), e-exchanges and e-businesses. Or the product can substantially contribute to initiatives in integrating enterprise applications, managing knowledge or turning data into business intelligence.

"In simplifying integration and moving data across incompatible systems, D2K saves substantial hard dollars that companies can then reinvest in their businesses," said Ron Schrimp, Director of the Information Management Group at Trizetto, a health-care ASP and one of ILN's early adopters.

Redefines Routers

ILN's ability to enable virtual networks depends heavily on IILRs that extract and transform data according to user-defined business rules, move it seamlessly among disparate systems and thus enable it to be combined to yield intelligence. The IILRs are unique in giving buyers the option of splitting single-transformation jobs into multiple sub-tasks or "threads" and then executing each in different CPUs within the same symmetrical multiprocessor. In a recent benchmark test, D2K's version of multithreading accelerated the completion of a large, complex workload by a factor of 3.5.

Complementing the IILRs' multithreading capability is a multiprocessing option that further increases throughput by performing multiple-transformation jobs in parallel. The IILRs' multiprocessing and multithreading features lend ILN a big competitive advantage, as does another of its strengths -- a high degree of ready scalability. To expand the capacity of D2K's infrastructure to carry data, enterprises need only equip their networked nodes with additional IILRs.

Responsibility for managing the IILRs rests partly with the ILAM and the ILNM. In addition to enforcing a single, consistent logical view of data across heterogeneous systems in a distributed network, the application manager doubles as a repository for the business rules that dictate the product's transformations of data.

ILN is available immediately.

About D2K

D2K(TM), Inc., a privately held software provider based in San Jose and Singapore specializes in moving and integrating data among heterogeneous systems. D2K's patented Information Logistics Network (ILN(TM)) is the first multi-purpose architecture to replace centralized hubs with intelligent, distributed routers that transform data for varying purposes and support most major hardware platforms, operating environments, databases and applications. Customers in all vertical markets count on ILN to enable e-commerce, e-exchanges and other strategic IT initiatives. For further information, visit www.d2k.com.

D2K and ILN are trademarks of D2K, Incorporated. All other products and services are the property of their respective owners.