Rhythms Netconnections Joins Vitria Business Network.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 3, 2000

North American Broadband Services Provider Uses Vitria ebusiness Platform to Electronically Bond With Internet Service Providers (ISPs)

Using Industry Standard XML DTDs

Vitria Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq:VITR), a leading ebusiness platform provider, today announced that Rhythms NetConnections Inc. (Nasdaq:RTHM), a North American provider of broadband communication services, has joined the Vitria Business Network. The Vitria Business Network is a network of Vitria-enabled trading communities and their exchanges, hubs and trading partners. The Vitria Business Network facilitates quick and easy electronic access to a rapidly expanding network of product and service providers serving the business needs of multiple industries, including telecommunications, high-tech supply chain, utilities, healthcare, financial services and insurance. By enabling fast, easy, low-cost electronic bonding between businesses and the exchanges and hubs of their customers, suppliers and partners, the Vitria Business Network will help Rhythms to streamline and automate its service supply chain and reduce the time and cost required to bring new products and services to market.

"We are pleased to be a part of the Vitria Business Network," said Michael Lanier, CIO of Rhythms. "The Vitria Business Network will help us to continue to build dynamic relationships with channel partners by reducing the complexity, time and cost associated with forming new relationships. We expect operational productivity to increase as we aggressively deploy our electronic bonding capabilities, and system-to-system integration between our partners will reduce the need for human intervention in the provisioning of DSL orders on a large scale."

Rhythms, a charter member of the Vitria Business Network, has deployed Vitria BusinessWare for DSL, Vitria's integrated ebusiness solution for end-to-end ordering and flow-through provisioning of DSL-based broadband services. The DSL provisioning process requires complex interactions with multiple business partners across the telco supply chain, including Data Local Exchange Carriers (DLECs), ISPs and Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers (ILECs). Each of these companies have their own separate operational support systems (OSS) that must be carefully coordinated to provide DSL service to the consumer. By electronically bonding with these partners over the Internet, coordinating the flow of information between each partner using pre-defined business process templates, and communicating information in a standard format which each partner understands, Rhythms has formed an electronic business community which provides seamless, reliable and responsive provisioning of DSL services throughout North America.

A critical element in Rhythms' system was the adoption of a standard format for defining the information flow between partners over the Internet. Messages are based on documents written in the eXtensible Markup Language (XML), with Document Type Definitions (DTDs) specific to the DSL supply chain, that can be interpreted by all Rhythms' partners easily and quickly. This dramatically reduces the complexity of creating and maintaining new business linkages and allows rapid scaling of the electronic community to new channel partners. BusinessWare for DSL incorporates these industry standard DTD's, which were developed in conjunction with Rhythms' industry expertise.

"The adoption of standard DTDs is key to minimizing the scaling issues associated with provisioning orders through our carrier and channel partners," said Lanier. "The interface specifications that we took a leadership position in developing with Vitria allow us to reduce the time, cost and human touch associated with new partner relationships, thus making it easy to do business with us."

The BusinessWare for DSL solution also includes pre-defined process models (PIMs) that manage and automate critical processes, such as order pre-qualification, order entry, and order status. These PIMs are based on the emerging xDML (eXtensible DSL Markup Language) standard, designed to support the flow and management of transactions throughout the DSL supply chain. The PIMs provide full connectivity with xDML, enabling companies' existing OSSs to accept, process, and generate XML. Vitria is a co-sponsor of the xDML standard.

"Rhythms' success is an excellent example of what can be achieved with the right combination of technology and industry expertise," said JoMei Chang, CEO and president of Vitria. "The adoption of de facto standards and BusinessWare in the telco supply chain facilitates rapid growth as well as opportunities for new services and partner linkages as the trading network evolves."

About Rhythms

Rhythms NetConnections Inc. (Nasdaq:RTHM) provides DSL-based, broadband communication services to businesses and consumers in North America. Based in Englewood, Colo., Rhythms currently serves 47 markets, covering 84 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). Telecommunications services for Rhythms are provided by Rhythms Links Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Rhythms. For more information, call 800/RHYTHMS (800/749-8467), or visit the company's Web site at www.rhythms.com.

About Vitria

Vitria Technology, Inc. is a leading ebusiness platform provider. Vitria's eBusiness platform, BusinessWare, automates mission-critical business processes across the extended enterprise, reducing time to market, shortening lead times, lowering operating costs, and increasing customer satisfaction. Vitria is a publicly traded company (Nasdaq:VITR) based in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, call 408/212-2700, visit the company's Web site at www.vitria.com, or send email to [e-mail].

This press release includes forward-looking statements that are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those referred to in the forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to, risk as related to market acceptance of Vitria's product, deployment delays or errors associated with these products, hardware platform incompatibilities, reliance on a limited number of customers for a majority of revenue, need to maintain and enhance certain business relationships with system integrators and other parties, ability to manage growth, activities by Vitria and others regarding protection of proprietary information, release of competitive products and other actions by competitors, Year 2000 problems and economic downturns in either domestic or foreign markets. These forward-looking statements are generally identified by words such as "expect," "anticipate," "intend," "believe," "hope," "assume," "estimate" and other similar words and expressions.

Note to Editors: BusinessWare(R) is a trademark of Vitria Technology, Inc. All other names may be trademarks of the companies with which they are associated.