Inference Ships First Comprehensive Content Management and Retrieval System; CBR Content Navigator 3.0 Helps Companies Harness Corporate Knowledge to Solve Problems More Effectively.

NOVATO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 19, 1997--Inference Corp. (NASDAQ:INFR) today announced that it is now shipping the CBR Content Navigator product family, which provides quick and easy guided access to the full assortment of corporate knowledge needed to solve problems and answer questions effectively -- including access to information in the widest variety of formats, from the Internet to information contained in the latest release of Lotus Notes and Verity TOPIC.

CBR Content Navigator can access and manage a range of unstructured information, including cases containing experiences, solutions, and answers (e.g., how to fix a printer or which product best meets customer requirements); document summaries and abstracts (e.g., technical notes and product specifications); and additional documents in a variety of formats in personal and corporate libraries (e.g., product specifications and reference manuals).

"Knowledge management will be the `killer app' of the year 2000," said Peter R. Tierney, chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Inference Corporation. "CBR Content Navigator is the first product to deliver a comprehensive content management and navigation solution for customer service and knowledge management, and companies that use these technologies -- such as Inference customers Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, NCR Corporation and PeopleSoft -- are well on their way to fully exploiting their corporate knowledge for competitive advantage."

"CBR Content Navigator is the first in a new breed of products that utilize the knowledge management framework," said Geoffrey Bock, senior consultant at Patricia Seybold Group. "This framework begins with a problem-solving focus -- information related to a specific domain. It includes an extensive catalog of relevant relationships and incorporates one or more online information repositories capable of storing and quickly retrieving many different kinds of business information."

CBR Content Navigator Product Family

The CBR Content Navigator family of products includes:

-- CasePoint Standard - A powerful, easy-to-use search and retrieval application, available as a 16- and 32-bit product, which is ideal for OEM/embedded and knowledge distribution applications. It can be deployed in a stand-alone, file-server or client/server environment. CasePoint Standard provides an intuitive dialogue-based interface that requests further input until the solution is located.

-- CasePoint Professional - A more robust, fully object-oriented 32-bit search and retrieval application for corporate knowledge. It offers both the intuitive dialogue-based interface of CasePoint Standard and a new visual folder-based view of content for experienced users.

-- CasePoint Verity Search - An option to CasePoint Professional that integrates and provides access to documents using Verity TOPIC.

-- CBR Express Professional Author - The primary knowledge creation and maintenance application designed to capture and update cases quickly. It offers a fully object-oriented authoring environment with visual content management techniques.

-- CBR Express Generator - A stand-alone application which allows users to automatically create a case base representation that summarizes a set of documents, allowing easy access to information in tech notes, Lotus Notes, or HTML pages.

-- CBR Express Reports - An integrated set of tools used to manage, test and report on the consistency and validity of the content in a case base. Future releases of the CBR Content Navigator product family will include development kits for embedding and customizing CBR Content Navigator's search, acquisition and management technologies as well as upgrades for CasePoint WebServer.

What's New in CBR Content Navigator

Enhanced Search and Retrieval

-- Enhanced expert search using direct folder browsing that enables users familiar with the content to find answers more quickly.

-- Improved search status information that guides novice users more effectively.

Lowered Cost of Case Base Authoring and Maintenance

A powerful visualization model of knowledge representation allows users to organize similar content into folders, making it quick and easy to create new cases and to maintain existing ones.

CasePoint Professional adapts and improves case base content through use by automatically adding new keywords and phrases to existing solutions.

New Document Summarization Features

CBR Express Generator, CBR Content Navigator's document summarization module, supports Lotus Notes, HTML, SGML, Microsoft Word, ASCII Text files, Microsoft Windows 3.1 and Windows 95 Help files, and Rich Text Format.

Unlock Lotus Notes Databases with CBR Content Navigator

CBR Content Navigator allows users to find Lotus Notes documents quickly and easily using the iterative search, retrieval and clustering techniques of CasePoint. It is one of the first applications developed for Lotus Notes 4.5.

Integration with Verity Full Text Search Engine

Integration with Verity TOPIC provides an additional access method to retrieve and manage complete documents. Users can now use the proven CBR dialog-based guided search paradigm to access documents indexed using Verity TOPIC.

CBR Content Navigator Compatible with CBR2

CBR Content Navigator is completely upward compatible from CBR2. Current CBR2 customers with active support and maintenance agreements will be automatically upgraded to CBR Content Navigator products.

Pricing and Availability

CBR Content Navigator is now available and supports Windows 3.1, Windows95, WindowsNT, and Oracle, Sybase, SQL Server, Informix, DB2, and Raima Database Manager databases. Future releases will support Sun Solaris, OS/2, AIX, and HP-UX.

CBR Content Navigator is available in English, with German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese versions coming soon. Inference is offering introductory pricing until April 30, 1997 on the CasePoint products as well as concurrent user pricing.

CasePoint Standard is $895 per CPU or $1,790 per concurrent user until April 30, 1997.

CasePoint Professional, regularly $1,795 per CPU, is priced at $1,295 per CPU or $2,590 per concurrent user.

CasePoint Verity Search is $195 per CPU, or $390 per concurrent user.

CBR Express Professional Author is $6,995 per CPU

CBR Express Generator is $14,995 per CPU

CBR Express Reports is $1,495 per CPU.

About CBR Content Navigator

Inference's CBR Content Navigator product family facilitates successful dialogue for problem resolution in business environments with customers, prospects and other employees. CBR's intuitive approach makes Inference's products ideal for deployment of knowledge in environments such as the World Wide Web.

A typical CBR session begins with a description of the problem the user is having or the product a customer wants to purchase. This is matched to descriptions of previously solved problems or to product characteristics that identify likely solutions and products. CBR products further guide the user by posing a set of questions that is used to refine the search until a very likely solution or product is presented, contributing to customer satisfaction by increasing first call resolutions and decreasing call times and initial training time.

Inference's CBR products provide a common platform for the search and retrieval of unstructured information, enabling users to publish and manage corporate knowledge and past experiences in a format that is readily usable by employees tasked with problem solving, product configuration and product recommendation.

Complete authoring, automated testing and query tools are enhanced by integrated customer and problem/opportunity management applications which offer a complete suite of templates for the customer service agent, help desk operator, or telesales or telemarketing representative. Inference's CBR products support multiple deployment models including client/server, Internet and OEM embedded applications.

Inference Corporation

Inference is a leading provider of software tools and content that help people in business identify and resolve problems and recommend solutions for other people. Inference's case-based reasoning products are used by hundreds of leading organizations around the world -- at telesales and telemarketing centers, support call centers, on help desks for technology, human resources and policies, for self-help sites over the Internet, and automated resolution on the desktop.

The company's headquarters is located in Novato, Calif., with its international headquarters in Slough, UK. The company also offers a complete line of consulting, support and training services from offices throughout the U.S. and Europe. For information regarding products and services, contact Inference Corp. at 415/893-7200, send an e-mail to [e-mail] or visit its World Wide Web page at www.inference.com . -0-

Note to Editors: The Inference logo, CBR Express and CasePoint are registered trademarks and CBR Content Navigator is a trademark of Inference Corporation. All other company names and products are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

CONTACT: Inference Corporation

Susanna Cesar, 415/893-7208

[e-mail]

or

Phase Two Strategies

Jenni Chang, 415/772-8424

[e-mail]