Micromuse Delivers Integrated RiverSoft Solution.

Business and Technology Editors

Networld+Interop and COMDEX Atlanta 2002

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 10, 2002

Device Polling and Root-Cause Analysis Functionality

Available Now; Provides Key Component of

Micromuse's End-to-End IT Management Solution

NetWorld + Interop - Micromuse Inc. (Nasdaq: MUSE), the leading provider of service and business assurance software, today announced it is delivering RiverSoft's NMOS solution integrated with the Netcool(R) suite.

Now shipping, the combined solution extends and enhances the Netcool suite with advanced discovery, root-cause analysis mapping and visualization for new generation networks. Micromuse is demonstrating the solution in Booth #811.

With the combined solution, Micromuse extends its technology lead in the area of intelligent infrastructure management and correlation while continuing the Netcool suite's renowned business features such as scalability, realtime customer service management and rapid deployment. These attributes, in turn, will allow Micromuse to continue to deliver a rapid return on investment and a low total cost of ownership to customers seeking maximum value from their business infrastructures.

"This is an exciting step for our company and for our customers," said Greg Brown, Micromuse's Chairman & CEO. "The NMOS technology we have acquired from RiverSoft has a critical role to play, both in helping our customers improve their ability to achieve the highest possible service levels for their customers, and even more importantly, enhancing their visibility at the business layer. This unbeatable combination solidly establishes Micromuse as the technology leader in IT management solutions."

"Both OSS and IT require more automated capabilities for assuring critical business services," said Dennis Drogseth, VP, Enterprise Management Associates. "Without advanced levels of automation, and without highly self-adaptive management solutions, IT's ability to grapple with critical business concerns becomes an academic exercise laden with administrative overhead. The combination of NMOS with Micromuse's Netcool suite can provide IT and OSS with a strong automated foundation for topology, inventory and problem resolution, with a high-degree of flexibility in accommodating unique network environments."

Benefits of the Integration

With the integration of the NMOS solution, Micromuse offers a complete set of modular software applications for gathering network intelligence and service and business assurance. The combined package, known as the Netcool/Precision version 3.1 application, includes the following features and benefits:

- A root-cause analysis and end-to-end management solution that is applicable for any size business that scales to the world's largest and most complex IT infrastructures;

- A simple, out-of-the box solution that is easy to install, use, and maintain;

- The ability to manage service from the application layer down to the transmission layer;

- Unique support for leading-edge, new generation technologies such as MPLS, Storage Area Networks, Wireless Networks, Metro Ethernet, Pseudo-wire emulation and LAN Telephony.

"The exceptional discovery and topology features of NMOS lay the foundation for delivering more effective Netcool solutions at the business layer," said Suhas Uliyar, Micromuse's Chief Solutions Architect and VP, Product Management. "Netcool's service management, security management, and business impact management solutions can all draw from the additional infrastructure intelligence provided by NMOS."

"I believe that Riversoft has just joined forces with the vanguard company in business and service assurance solutions. This acquisition brings together Micromuse's and Riversoft's technology to deliver enhanced management for next generation networks," said Phil Tee, the founder and CTO of RiverSoft, who also led the development team that created Micromuse's Netcool solution in the early 1990s. "Our solutions possess distinct features and strengths and are based on the same coding languages and software development practices. They also reflect a shared philosophy embracing open architecture and easy, plug-in extensions to address customers' evolving and expanding infrastructures. I have tremendous confidence in our ensuing plan and Micromuse's ability to accelerate this to the market."

Available Today

Effective immediately, Micromuse is shipping NMOS with a field-tested, best-practices integration with the Netcool suite. The integrated solution offers:

- Network auto-discovery of Layer 2 and 3 for IP, with

extensions for MPLS, DSL, ATM and frame relay;

- Advanced object modeling techniques for cataloging the network

intelligence that is automatically captured from the network;

- Dynamic physical and logical topology visualization for

mapping networks into manageable and meaningful views for

users and other applications.

In addition, today Micromuse is shipping the NMOS RCA Engine application for pinpointing the root-cause of infrastructure problems. Screen shots are available upon request.

About the Netcool(R) Suite

Micromuse's Netcool(R) software suite provides businesses with the assurance that their networks, services and applications are working. By allowing our customers to see what's happening throughout the infrastructure in realtime, Netcool applications enable them to respond to problems before they cause network-based business services to go down.

Netcool suite applications install out-of-the-box, deploy rapidly and scale as networks grow. Micromuse's flagship, Netcool/OMNIbus(TM) application, includes a library of off-the-shelf software modules that allow our customers to collect and consolidate fault information from more than 1,000 environments spanning voice and IP, cable/broadband, switches and routers, and enterprise management systems.

About Micromuse

Micromuse Inc. (Nasdaq: MUSE) is the leading provider of service and business assurance software. Micromuse's recent list of awards includes the Crossroads A-List Award for Best IP Network Diagnosis Product for the Netcool(R)/Visionary(TM) application. In addition, Micromuse was recently recognized in the Forbes 500, Bloomberg's Tech 100, the Barron's 500, the Business Week Info Tech 100, Deloitte & Touche's Technology Fast 500, the San Francisco Chronicle 500 and Network World's NW200. Micromuse customers include AT&T, BT, Cable & Wireless, Charles Schwab, Deutsche Telekom, Digex, EarthLink, GE Appliances, ITC DeltaCom, J.P. Morgan Chase, T-Mobile and Verizon. Headquarters are located at 139 Townsend Street, San Francisco, Calif. 94107; [phone]. The Web site is at www.micromuse.com.

Micromuse and Netcool are registered trademarks of Micromuse Ltd. All other trademarks and registered trademarks in this document are the properties of their respective owners. Any statements contained in this press release that do not describe historical facts may constitute forward-looking statements as that term is defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on current expectations, but are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties.

The factors that could cause actual future results to differ materially from the forward-looking statements include the following: fluctuations in customer demand, the Company's ability to manage its growth (including the ability to hire sufficient sales and technical personnel), the risks associated with the expansion of the Company's distribution channels, the risk of new product introductions and customer acceptance of new products; the rapid technological change which characterizes the Company's markets, the risks associated with competition, the risks associated with international sales as the Company expands its markets, and the ability of the Company to compete successfully in the future, as well as other risks identified in the Company's Securities and Exchange Commission Filings, including but not limited to those appearing under the caption "Risk Factors" in the Company's most recent Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q and on Form 10-K on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission and available on the Company's Web site.

NetWorld + Interop Booth #811