BackWeb Offline Web Infrastructure Selected By Major Enterprise Customers

BackWeb® ProactivePortal™ Server to Provide Offline Access to Portal Content For Improved Field Operations

San Jose, Calif. — Jan 7, 2003 — BackWeb Technologies (Nasdaq: BWEB), a leading provider of offline web infrastructure software, today announced that several enterprise customers have selected BackWeb software to extend the reach of their enterprise portal implementations to mobile sales, service and reseller communities. BackWeb is addressing the mobile user community's need to have on-the-go access to critical portal content, in solutions such as mySAP™ Enterprise Portal, when they are working out of the office without an online connection.

Enterprise portals are increasingly becoming the central place within which employees do work, and companies are beginning to recognize that offline access to the portal is a required portal component if they want to reach their the mobile user base. "Offline access infrastructure is absolutely critical for enterprises that are deploying portals with their mobile communities in mind," said Gene Phifer, vice president and research director for Gartner. "In order to maximize portal ROI [Return On Investment], enterprises must make critical portal content available to mobile users when they are disconnected or working outside of the office."

"Companies with large mobile workforces in sales, field services and distribution understand the value of extending their portal offline. We are seeing increased demand for BackWeb's offline infrastructure software among companies where business executives lead the purchase decision and especially among mySAP Enterprise Portal customers," said Eli Barkat, CEO of BackWeb.

Offline for Sales Distributors, Partners, Resellers
Kaeser Kompressoren, one of the most important suppliers of compressors and air systems, has chosen to extend the reach of its enterprise portal implementation by using BackWeb's offline infrastructure to ensure that its mobile and poorly connected distributors, partners and resellers have access to time-sensitive information such as price changes, sales presentations and product specifications. Because many of Kaeser's users work out of the office at customer sites or have poor connectivity, offline access to important, up-to-date portal content is critical. With access to timely and accurate portal information anytime and anywhere, Kaeser's mobile users will no longer have to spend significant time on the phone requesting updated information and its users with inadequate online access will automatically have the latest information available on their local PCs without having to manually download documents through slow Internet connections.

"Since the majority of our sales and service employees, distributors, partners and resellers either work offline or have poor connectivity, it has always been a challenge to keep them updated with the latest information," said Falko Lameter, chief information officer at Kaeser Kompressoren. "With BackWeb's ProactivePortal Server, we can now guarantee that our portal users have the most current information necessary for them to be effective, even when they are disconnected. This faster, more efficient exchange of information allows us to develop closer contact with everyone who contributes to the bottom line and makes them more efficient. We simply do not know any other product on the market that can do all of this."

Un-tethered for Field Service Engineers (FSEs)
Lam Research Corporation, a leading supplier of wafer fabrication equipment and services to the world's semiconductor industry, is developing a portal for its FSEs. The company's enterprise portal will be the workplace through which FSEs access essential transactions, product data and other information essential to support their customer base. Lam licensed BackWeb's offline infrastructure to expand the reach of its portal for its FSEs. With the BackWeb ProactivePortal Server, Lam's field engineers will have access to the most current product and support information even when offline.

"Our FSEs do the majority of their work in clean rooms where connectivity is often not available. Effective service delivery requires constant access to product data, material availability, warranty information, BOM [Bill Of Materials], and a host of other technical information including drawings, technical memos, and our knowledge repository," said Les Spencer, managing director of Global Information Technology at Lam. "Today our FSEs call in to support staff at the office to access data, check availability and issue materials on their behalf. BackWeb's ProactivePortal Server will extend the value of our portal to our field staff by giving them access to the important product and support data they need in an offline environment. We are excited by the prospect of improving our service offering to our customers as our un-tethered capability is enhanced with the implementation of the BackWeb solution."

Offline Sales
A leading provider of Internet security software and a leading manufacturer of chocolate and non-chocolate confectionery have chosen to deploy BackWeb's offline infrastructure as part of the first phase of their portal implementation for their sales forces. Using BackWeb ProactivePortal Server, each of these companies's sales force will be able to personalize the sections of their enterprise portal that they wish to enable for offline access. As a result, their sales representatives will be able to access information such as price lists, partner and channel information, customer intelligence and corporate presentations when they are working on the road and are disconnected. The implementation will also provide sales management offline access to tools that track productivity and performance, allowing management to stay current on the company's success.

Offline for Remote Operations
Owens-Illinois, Inc., (NYSE: OI) one of the world's leading manufacturers of glass and plastics packaging products, has decided to install BackWeb's ProactivePortal Server as part of its enterprise portal implementation. Earlier this year, the company began implementing BackWeb's ProactivePortal Awareness functionality to monitor and assess the efficiency levels of its manufacturing plants worldwide. Next year, the company plans to expand the use of the ProactivePortal Server by providing offline access to its plant personnel in remote locations in order to assure fast access to portal information regardless of the network connection speeds. By expanding its portal reach to include mobile and disconnected users, Owens-Illinois expects to accelerate the adoption of its portal. Without offline access, the company would risk having a portal with limited adoption rates and therefore limited value.

"We decided to integrate BackWeb's offline infrastructure in the next phase of our portal development after realizing that with low bandwidth network connections, many of our critical users will not use the portal because of unacceptable slow access to portal content. Using BackWeb offline infrastructure will help increase the usage of the portal by providing fast access to its content for all our worldwide plants" said Earl Newsome, vice president and CIO of Owens-Illinois. "With offline access, our plant managers and offline users will be able to share best practices and monitor efficiency levels in a more timely manner – a function we expect will result in higher levels of productivity."