TIAN Announces Compliance to Edge Side Includes -- ESI -- Specification; TIAN Joins Akamai, Oracle, and Others To Lead New, Proposed Web Standard.

Business Editors & Technology Writers

DENVER--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 18, 2001

TIAN Software Company, Inc.(TM), the leading provider of Web Services for Intelligent eBusiness Infrastructure, today announced TIAN's compliance and support for Edge Side Includes (ESI), a simple mark-up language allowing dynamic Web content to be assembled at, and delivered from, the edge of the Internet.

The TIAN(TM) suite of context-aware Web Services is designed to be deployed on top of an existing eBusiness without "unhooking" existing investments in applications or infrastructure. TIAN Web Services provide detailed business intelligence, increase employee productivity, strengthen the relationship between users and other eBusinesses, and decrease the costs of managing and presenting digital assets.

eBusinesses have learned that moving content to the edge distorts reporting, and are using TIAN RelevanceDirect(TM) to deliver comprehensive reporting on the relevance of all content fragments, including both ESI fragments from the edge and content stored in distributed servers. TIAN IntentDirect(TM), which dynamically repackages web content from any location into a relevant, run-time User Experience, can now repackage ESI fragments as part of that experience. IntentDirect enables content providers to capture the Quality of Service (QoS) benefits of ESI in the form of cost savings and extend those savings into the Quality of the User Experience (QoE). TIAN CacheDirect(TM) delayers content into fragments and determines the most relevant content to deploy at the edge, and can pre-populate the cache with the most relevant ESI fragments.

"With TIAN Web Services installed on edge devices, TIAN adds intelligence and bridges the link between the edge device and the origin server, so a business really understands what happens at run-time," said Christian Gheorghe, TIAN CEO. "By developing to the ESI specification, we achieve our goal of not only delivering content from the edge, but elevating the User Experience by delivering content that's most relevant to the user at any given moment and on any touch-point. TIAN Web Services can be marshaled dynamically at run-time, and represent the emerging generation of eBusiness systems."

"ESI represents a true paradigm shift for how enterprise applications will be written and deployed in the future," said George Kurian, Vice President, product marketing, Akamai. "By integrating ESI into their offerings, forward-thinking companies like TIAN are helping eBusinesses improve performance, increase efficiencies, and ultimately improve the experience for the end user."

"As an enabling technology, ESI allows application servers to become content delivery network-ready," noted Thomas Kurian, Vice President of Development for Oracle9i at Oracle Corporation. "By extending the performance and cost-saving benefits of Web caching and content delivery services and by accelerating the most dynamic Web-based applications, ESI leaders such as Oracle and TIAN will help improve Web site response times and allow companies to support large numbers of users without costly hardware upgrades."

Unique to ESI is a mechanism for managing content transparently across Application Server solutions, Content Infrastructure, Content Management Systems, and Content Delivery Networks. As a result, ESI enables companies to develop Web applications once, then choose at deployment time where the application should be assembled: on the application server, the content infrastructure, or the content management system.

About Edge Side Includes (ESI)

eBusinesses use the ESI markup language to define Web page fragments which, when combined with a Web page template, define how a business can dynamically assemble a Web page, then deliver that Web page to a user. Using ESI, companies can build associated caching rules that specify a lifetime for each fragment; for example, a dynamic stock quote might have a 30-minute lifetime, while a weather warning might have a lifetime of two hours. For more information on ESI, including a draft of the specification, an ESI Overview and technical documents, please visit www.esi.org.

About TIAN Software Company, Inc.

TIAN Software Company, Inc., is a Denver, Colorado-based company delivering Web Services that add a layer of intelligence to the Internet by understanding and responding to the context of each user interaction. In today's "always on" Internet, TIAN Web Services deliver Quality of Experience to companies with large numbers of users and high volumes of content distributed across servers, data centers, regional edges, and highly distributed edges. TIAN Web Services conform to business, industry, and technical standards, including ESI, J2EE, SOAP, and ICAP. For more information, call 303/894-0600 or visit the company's web site at http://www.tiansoft.com.

Oracle is a registered trademark and Oracle9i is a trademark or registered trademark of Oracle Corporation.