ELECTROGIG and Illustra Partnership Enhances Asset Management for the Multimedia Market.

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 7, 1995--ELECTROGIG, a leading 3D animation and virtual set solution supplier, today announced a strategic co-development partnership with Illustra Information Technologies, the leading supplier of object-relational database software for multimedia asset management and Internet applications. The companies will combine development resources to develop a Virtual Set Creation Management System.

The partnership with Illustra allows ELECTROGIG to move ahead quickly with its plans to integrate asset management with its line of 3D animation products and its virtual set technology: GIGTIME Reality Tracking. Product release dates that include asset management will be announced at a later date.

The Illustra Object-Relational DBMS, combined with Illustra's Visual Intelligence technology -- a powerful, content-based image retrieval system for retrieving images, animation and video from complex multimedia databases -- provides the foundation for building customized asset management solutions tailored to the unique needs of each organization.

Visual Intelligence enables users to retrieve any kind of image, including animation and video frames, based on the actual content of the image rather than on keywords. Illustra's Visual Intelligence system actually "looks" at the image and understands its features so users can ask the system to "find other images that look like this one." Competitive image browsers and management systems use keywords to find and retrieve images, which are useful but cumbersome, limiting and inefficient when addressing multidimensional data such as images. Illustra's Visual Intelligence system represents a new concept in image retrieval and management that delivers significant productivity gains to customers while making the image database management task much easier and more intuitive.

"We have long since felt that asset management was crucial to the multimedia market. However, until Illustra released the first object-relational database, the solutions available have not accurately met the needs of the market," said Leen Zevenbergen, ELECTROGIG president and chief executive officer. "Asset management is an absolute requirement for companies to manage their digital assets. This will, in turn, allow the successful expansion of the use of 3D animation and virtual set technology. We are very pleased to partner with Illustra so that we may broaden the functionality our customers receive from ELECTROGIG products."

"Partnering with ELECTROGIG was a natural choice for us. We found their technology and business vision of the multimedia market to be in direct concert with ours," said Dick Williams, Illustra president and chief executive officer. "They clearly understand the inherent customer value and vast market opportunities that this combination of technology brings."

ELECTROGIG develops, markets and supports the GIG family of software products and services for design professionals in the broadcast, film and video, CAD and publishing industries. ELECTROGIG provides its users comprehensive training and support services including access to online support via the World Wide Web. GIG tools are currently used by visual-communication and image-production experts in over 800 institutions and corporations and 40 countries worldwide. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with offices in Amsterdam, Holland, and Hong Kong and employs 80 people worldwide.

Headquartered in Oakland, Calif., Illustra Information Technologies Inc., the database for Cyberspace (http://www.illustra.com), is the leading worldwide supplier of media asset management systems and tools for applications in multimedia and entertainment, digital medial publishing and financial services. The company's flagship product, the Illustra Server allows users to store, manage, and analyze complex multi-media data such as audio, video and images in a single database, along with traditional text and numbers using industry-standard SQL. The company was founded in 1992.

ELECTROGIG contact information:

WWW url:http://www.electrogig.com

The Americas: Asia/Pacific ELECTROGIG ELECTROGIG 50 Osgood Place 6th floor, Kam Chung Commercial San Francisco, CA 94133 Building Tel: [phone] 19-21 Hennessy Road Fax: [phone] HONG KONG e-mail: [e-mail] Tel: [phone]

fax: [phone]

e-mail: [e-mail]

Europe, Middle East, Africa: ELECTROGIG Amstel 222 1017 AJ Amsterdam Netherlands Tel: [phone] Fax: [phone] e-mail: [e-mail]

CONTACT: ELECTROGIG, San Francisco

Nancy Hilton, 415/956-8212

or

Illustra

Sandra Bateman, 510/869-6209