Reef Closes First Round Financing with Viventures, Cisco Systems, and Net Fund Europe; First Round Financing Propels Reef to World Stage.

BRUSSELS, Belgium--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 8 1999--

Reef (www.reef.com), a global Internet software company providing a complete and modular suite of Internet applications called Reef Internetware, announced today that it has secured $13 million in private equity for its first round of financing.

Investors include Viventures, Cisco Systems, Net Fund Europe and private investors. The investments will fuel Reef's aggressive growth in the Internet application market.

"The multiplication of complex Internet applications requires increasing and costly integration efforts," stated Jean-Pascal Tranie of lead investor Viventures, an investment fund led by the $30 billion Vivendi Group. "With their integrated and modular product offering leveraging cutting-edge technology, Reef is the answer to this challenge.

"Similar to building blocks, Reef's applications allow companies to deploy their business online faster and more cost-effectively. For customers, Reef's suite of Internetware helps to rapidly gain a competitive advantage. Reef's comprehensive product line and its immediate benefits for customers motivated our investment in the company," he said.

Clearly positioned to become the industry leader, Reef offers customers an easy-to-use, scalable and rapidly deployable Internet application environment that empowers all businesses to efficiently manage their value chain without technical knowledge.

Reef's integrated suite of Internet applications enables every business to transition to e-business at Internet speed. Enterprises can adapt their business applications to ever-changing business needs without investing in user training and costly application redeployment.

This first round investment will continue to build momentum for Reef's aggressive growth in the Internet application market. According to Philippe Brawerman, Reef President, CEO and co-founder, "Our company is committed to gaining significant market share in the Internet application market.

"The recent investments will be used to expand our world class engineering team, rapidly deploy new products, to acquire innovative Internet applications and systems integration resources, and to extend the reach of our sales and support organizations that serve our customers worldwide."

Reef currently has offices in Brussels, Belgium; San Francisco; Sydney, Australia; and Paris.

The company, led by Brawerman who formerly was President of Europe, Africa and the Middle East for CISCO Systems, is in the process of launching the second version of its Internetware product suite.

Gregoire Revenu, Director of the Investment Banking Group at Bryan Garnier & Company said, "The company expanded very rapidly during the past nine months and has structured a management team and implemented processes which we believe will allow Reef to manage an impressive growth in the future."

About the Investors

Established in September 1998, Viventures is a venture capital fund with a presence in the United States (San Mateo, Calif.) and in Europe (Paris). The Fund provides capital for innovative telecommunications and Internet businesses.

Created by the Vivendi Group, the Fund's largest investor, it now maintains investments in 16 leading financial and industrial corporations with substantial interests in the high-technology industry. Viventures has financed 25 companies including iMediation, QXL, AdAuction and Cyras in France.

Cisco Systems is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet. Since shipping its first product in 1986, the company has grown into a global market leader that ranks number one or number two in market share for virtually every market segment in which it participates. Since becoming a public company in 1990, Cisco's annual revenues have increased from $69 million in that year to $8.46 billion in fiscal 1998.

As measured by market capitalization, Cisco is among the largest in the world. It employs approximately 20,600 people worldwide and sells its products in approximately 115 countries.

Net Fund Europe (NFE) is a recent Belgian investment Fund focusing exclusively on Internet initiatives. Founded by the Mitsika group (Carpetland, Brantano: $57 million revenues in fiscal 1998), NFE gathers both private and institutional investors as well as banks and industrial corporations. The objective of NFE is to invest in 15 to 20 early-stage Internet software and e-commerce companies.

Bryan Garnier & Company is a European Investment Bank focusing on European Growth Companies. Its corporate finance team serves leading companies in the IT, Telecom, Media and Internet industries. Its corporate finance activity includes private placements and public offerings (IPOs and security issues in primary markets in Europe).

Bryan Garnier & Company has a leadership position in European private placements with nearly 60 million Euros raised in 1999 for companies including OMNITICKET NETWORK, SCORT and REEF.

About Reef

Reef is a global Internet software company providing a complete and modular suite of enterprise-wide Internet applications. Reef's Internetware is built on an open, integrated application platform empowering business management using a simple Internet browser.

Reef Internetware enables e-commerce, online publishing and content brokering, multimedia asset management, business process re-engineering, and community building. Reef is a privately held company financed by Viventures, Cisco Systems, Net Fund Europe and individual investors.

For further information, visit http://www.reef.com

Note to Editors: Reef, Reef Publisher, Reef Commerce, Reef MediaCatalog, Reef Forum, Reef Tribe Manager, and Reef Form Manager are trademarks of Reef. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.