NIWS Co., LTD. and FiveSight Technologies Announce Distribution Partnership.

Business Editors

TOKYO and CHICAGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 18, 2002

Partnership Offers Complementary Suite of Software Enabling

Companies to Develop Enterprise Application Workflow (EAW) Solutions

NIWS Co., Ltd. (NIWS), a joint venture of IBM Japan, Ltd. (IBM) and the Nomura Research Institute (NRI), today announced a distribution agreement with Chicago-based FiveSight Technologies, Inc. This strategic partnership will enable NIWS to market solutions for FiveSight's XMLiris platform to its client base that consists of more than 250 businesses in the Japanese financial services industry. Clients include The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Ltd., The Mitsui Sumitomo Bank, Ltd., Nippon Life Insurance Co., and other well-known industry names such as Toshiba Corporation and Mitsubishi Corporation .

FiveSight's XMLiris platform is an integrated development and runtime software suite for creating enterprise application workflow ("EAW") solutions - technology that combines the most desirable aspects of both enterprise application integration (EAI) and business process management (BPM). NIWS chose this technology due to its reliability and rapid return on investment capabilities. In addition, because XMLiris employs the open standards of Java and XML, implementation timeframes can be anywhere from 30 - 85% faster than traditional solutions. Whereas traditional workflow and enterprise application integration (EAI) tools provide either user-dominant workflows or system-to-system connectivity, the XMLiris platform provides the power missing from traditional workflow tools with the flexibility missing from traditional EAI tools.

"NIWS and FiveSight have complementary resources that will enable our two companies to successfully service the Japanese financial services and insurance industries. Whereas NIWS already has experience with and develops EAI solutions from leading vendors such as IBM and Sybase, FiveSight develops complementary software to those vendors. This will enable NIWS to service clients that face numerous workflow and data-related challenges. These current and future clients of NIWS will now be able to cost-effectively create operations infrastructure requiring custom workflow design and be able to interface that infrastructure to the web through the use of Java," said Stephen Shu, FiveSight's Vice President of Operations and Strategic Initiatives.

"We are very happy to have a distribution partnership with FiveSight. FiveSight provides the foundation for flexible and advanced solutions that go beyond EAI, process automation and workflow. We are confident we can solve new and existing customers' EAW problems with XMLiris both effectively and smoothly," said Tetsuji Miyamoto, NIWS' Executive Vice President, Advanced Systems Division.

By offering XMLiris to the Japanese market, NIWS will thus be providing a comprehensive suite of software that will enable companies to develop enterprise solutions based on message-oriented middleware including:

- Workflow operations infrastructure that not only processes, transforms, and
validates data feeds and textual documents but also integrates specific
workflows with human personnel via the web.

- Information processing servers that manage and filter data feeds from data
providers into work portals.

- Custom engines that intelligently collect data from distributed field forces
using mobile equipment and integrating workflow with existing systems.

"The targeted markets of NIWS fits well with FiveSight's core technology offerings as industries such as financial services and insurance tend to be creating new products and services all of the time. These products and services tend to require tailored, data- and people-intensive workflow operations. The technology we offer to the market together as partners is a perfect fit," said Don Shirley, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for FiveSight.

About FiveSight Technologies, Inc.

FiveSight Technologies, Inc. is a specialized software development company based in Chicago, whose mission is to provide comprehensive workflow integration and software tools required for building mission-critical operations. FiveSight products are based on message-oriented middleware available from leading Java Message Service (JMS) vendors, and the products deliver significant return on investment by shortening implementation and integration timeframes and by simplifying ongoing maintenance and modification by both corporations and value-added resellers. The company is privately owned and targets data and document intensive industries including healthcare, insurance, and financial services. More information can be obtained by visiting http://www.fivesight.com.

About NIWS Co., Ltd.

NIWS Co., Ltd. (NIWS) was established on July 17,1992 as a joint venture between IBM Japan, Ltd. (IBM) and Nomura Research Institute, Ltd. (NRI). Combining IBM's leading edge hardware and NRI's application experience, NIWS provides cutting edge solutions, primarily for financial institutions, as a Business Server System Solution Provider. NIWS was the Japanese pioneer of massively parallel processing technology, installing the first domestic in-house IBM RS/6000 SP, a massively parallel processing UNIX server system. Clients include The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Ltd., The Mitsui Sumitomo Bank, Ltd., Nippon Life Insurance Co., NTT Data Communications Systems Corporation, Toshiba Corporation, Mitsubishi Corporation, and The Nomura Securities Co., Ltd. More information can be obtained by visiting http://www.niws.co.jp.