Vertica Systems Names Former Oracle SVP Jerry Held as Chairman.

Appointment Unites Three Veteran Database-Industry Innovators to Direct "the Most Important Database Systems Breakthrough in Two Decades"

ANDOVER, Mass. -- The board of directors of Vertica Systems, Inc. (www.vertica.com), a software company co-founded by database research and technology pioneer Dr. Michael Stonebraker and startup veteran Andy Palmer, today announced the appointment of database-industry veteran Jerry Held as chairman.

Dr. Held has more than 30 years of experience in building and managing enterprise software companies. He was formerly senior vice president of Oracle's Server Product Division, where he led a division of 1,500 people and helped the company grow from annual revenues of $1.5 billion to $6 billion.

"The Vertica Database[TM] is the most important breakthrough in database system design in two decades, and that's why I chose to join Vertica from among the many database startups seeking my involvement," said Dr. Held. "For far too long, many customers have been stuck with retrofitting 30-year-old, OLTP-oriented database technology to query-hungry analytic applications. By taking a clean-slate approach, Vertica has created a completely new database management system that ingeniously combines a number of technology innovations and takes advantage of today's hardware and open-source-software architectures."

"Jerry's vision, technical acumen and management expertise will be huge assets to Vertica as we take our product to market," said Mr. Palmer, Vertica's CEO. "In assembling our senior team, we've brought together many of the visionaries who helped create the modern database industry."

Those visionaries include Dr. Held; investor Ray Lane of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who was formerly president and chief operating officer of Oracle and is serving as a special advisor to Vertica; and Mike Stonebraker, who over his 30-year career in database research and technology created Ingres, POSTGRES and other pioneering database technologies still in wide use today. Vertica's board members include Mr. Palmer, Dr. Stonebraker, Paul Maeder of Highland Capital Partners, and G. Felda Hardymon of Bessemer Venture Partners.

Dr. Held is currently CEO of Held Consulting, LLC, where he is a strategic consultant to CEOs and senior executives of technology firms ranging from startups to very large organizations. Prior to Oracle, Dr. Held spent 18 years at Tandem Computers, where he was a member of the executive team that grew Tandem from a startup to a $2-billion company. During his tenure at Tandem, he was appointed to several senior management positions, including chief technology officer, senior vice president of strategy, and vice president of new ventures. During his early years at Tandem, Dr. Held led numerous product development efforts including the design and implementation of Tandem's original database products, including NonStop SQL.

Vertica has built a new, ultra-fast database management system for data warehouses, data marts and other query-intensive business applications. The Vertica Database is currently in trial with a number of customers and will be commercially available later in 2007. Product details will be available at that time (product details are available now to members of Vertica's Early Adopter Program; see http://www.vertica.com/earlyadopter for information about becoming an Early Adopter).

In a separate news release today, Vertica announced that the company has raised a total of $23.5 million in financing, with the recent completion of a $16.5-million Series B round.

About Vertica

Vertica Systems (www.vertica.com) is the innovator in the market for affordable, high-performance database management systems. Co-founded by database research and technology pioneer Dr. Michael Stonebraker and startup veteran Andy Palmer, Vertica has developed ultra-fast database technology for storing and querying very large databases using industry-standard hardware. With its unmatched scalability, flexibility and ease of use, Vertica's solution will bring corporate database architectures into the 21st century. Vertica is headquartered in Andover, Mass., and has raised $23.5 million in financing from Bessemer Venture Partners, Highland Capital Partners, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and New Enterprise Associates.