PostModern Computing announces the immediate availability of its BlackWidow Java Builder; BlackWidow enables Platform-Independent Distributed Computing over the Intranet and the Internet Using Java.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 2, 1996-- Concluding an extremely successful Beta program, PostModern Computing today announced the immediate and general availability of BlackWidow 1.0.

"The BlackWidow Beta program was very well received. There has been a tremendous amount of interest in BlackWidow and a very positive response from our Beta sites," said Jens Christensen, President and CEO of PostModern Computing.

The BlackWidow restricted Beta program included over 35 sites, including Andersen Consulting, Attachmate Corporation, Banff Center, Bank of America, CACI, Chemical Bank, DSTC, Fidelity, Fusion Systems Group, IBEX Corporation, Integrated Concepts International, Intel, Los Alamos National Laboratories, Merrill Lynch, Mitel, Mitre, Naval Research Laboratory, Novell, NTT Data, Oracle, RaboBank, Technical Resource Connection, Vanguard, West Virginia University and Xerox.

BlackWidow Beta customers have implemented varied and state of the art Intranet and Internet applications. "Novell has announced our intent to support a Java runtime environment on the NetWare server. We recently demonstrated distributed Java applications, supported by the BlackWidow ORB, running across NetWare and other Java-enabled platforms. The fact that the BlackWidow runtime is written in Java allowed BlackWidow to run on NetWare without requiring a port. We've found BlackWidow to be very natural and easy to use in the development of distributed Java applications and applets," said Dave Rorke, Software Engineering Consultant at Novell.

Chris Forsythe, Senior Business Development Manager of the Internet Products Group at Attachmate Corporation said, "Attachmate is extending its leadership in enterprise connectivity through advanced intranet solutions. Seamless integration requires standards based distributed architectures. PostModern's ORBeline and BlackWidow technologies allow Attachmate to bring distributed, fault tolerant solutions to the enterprise with new and advanced technologies like Java and CORBA. Our server based solutions will allow customers to access and retrieve intranet information from anywhere in the enterprise regardless of the platform."

Martin Haeberli, Director of Technology for Netscape Communications Corp. said, "PostModern's BlackWidow technology is a big step forward for Java developers building mission-critical Intranet applications on Netscape's Internet Applications Framework. We are glad to see PostModern's contributions to extending the capabilities of the Internet Applications Framework."

BlackWidow includes development tools for building distributed Java applications and a deployment environment that manages the interactions between the distributed applications. Applications written with BlackWidow will execute in Java-enabled browsers such as Netscape 2.0. BlackWidow is shipped with all the components necessary to build and deploy client/server Java applications that can execute in commercial Web browsers or in stand-alone mode.

The BlackWidow code generator automatically generates all the Java communications code necessary for distributed Java applications to interoperate. The code generator greatly speeds up the development of distributed BlackWidow applications. BlackWidow enables Java application programmers to focus on the high-level business logic without having to be concerned about the complexities of Java inter-process communication. BlackWidow also enables corporations to develop Java client applets that interface with their existing legacy applications.

BlackWidow applications communicate using the open Internet Inter-ORB Protocol (IIOP) specified by the Object Management Group (OMG). All applications built with BlackWidow have interfaces that conform to the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) 2.0 specification. This means that BlackWidow applications can interoperate with other CORBA 2.0 applications, including applications written in other languages such as C++ and Smalltalk.

BlackWidow offers users the ability to deploy distributed applications in a platform-independent manner. BlackWidow objects can run on any platform or operating system that is supported by Java, such as Windows, Macintosh and all UNIX platforms, thereby facilitating true heterogeneous computing.

Pricing

PostModern Computing also announced today that the price of a BlackWidow license for commercial users will be $99 per CPU. This pricing will enable a wide variety of commercial users to deploy robust, distributed Intranet and Internet applications. An optional BlackWidow Internet server is available that enables Internet access to deployed BlackWidow applications. The BlackWidow Internet server supports an unlimited number of Internet client connections to corporate Intranets and is priced at $5,000 per server for commercial users. BlackWidow 1.0 is available for downloading on the Internet for academic and non-profit use, as well as for evaluation purposes.

Licensing and Availability

BlackWidow is now available directly from PostModern Computing. BlackWidow can be obtained over the Internet from www.pomoco.com for evaluation, academic or non-profit use. Individuals can obtain BlackWidow for free evaluation to determine if they want to purchase BlackWidow software licenses. Students and staff of educational institutions and staff of non-profit organizations can use BlackWidow free of charge. Use of BlackWidow for commercial purposes requires the purchase of a BlackWidow software license.

The BlackWidow development environment is available on Windows 95, Windows NT and Solaris. Additional platforms will be supported later in 1996. Java applications developed with BlackWidow will execute on any Java-enabled platform. PostModern Computing

PostModern Computing Technologies, Inc., based in Mountain View, California, was founded in 1991. PostModern Computing provides a suite of products enabling the easy development and deployment of Internet and Intranet applications. In addition to BlackWidow, product offerings include ORBeline, the leading fault-tolerant object request and TPBroker, a transaction-based object request broker developed jointly with Hitachi, Ltd.

To learn more about BlackWidow, ORBeline and TPBroker, visit PostModern Computing on the web at http://www.pomoco.com.

BlackWidow, ORBeline and TPBroker are trademarks of PostModern Computing Technologies, Inc. Java is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. All other trademarks are proprietary to their respective manufacturers.

CONTACT: Kelley Lynn Kassa/John Giddings

Technology Solutions, Inc.

[phone]/[phone] ext. 215

[e-mail]/[e-mail]

or

Suresh Challa

PostModern Computing, Inc.

[phone]

[e-mail]