WhoMakesIt.com Selects BackWeb to Provide Polite Push Technology for New Business-to-Business Infomediary

On-line Navigational Service dedicated to Electronic Components Allows Subscribers to Automatically Receive Latest Product Information

SAN JOSE, Calif. — March 7, 2000 — BackWeb® Technologies (Nasdaq: BWEB), the leading provider of push for e-business solutions, and WhoMakesIt.com, the electronic component industry's first Web portal designed to provide users direct access to product information from manufacturers, today announced plans to use BackWeb's Polite™ push technology to proactively deliver customized content to thousands of portal subscribers. With BackWeb's technology, the WhoMakesIt.Com business-to-business infomediary will speed the process of selecting electronic components by proactively delivering to subscribers time-sensitive alerts and information about 3 million products from more than 1,200 manufacturers.

WhoMakesIt.com is a unique navigation service for the electronic components industry that helps connect buyers and sellers by efficiently distributing product information. As a supplier neutral infomediary, WhoMakesIt.com delivers fast access to the most complete, accurate and timely product information available from the manufacturers websites. In addition, WhoMakesIt.com allows component manufacturers to broaden their exposure to prospective customers and strengthen their relationships by providing information directly to the decision-makers. The infomediary site will begin using BackWeb to deliver information to subscribers in Q2 2000.

"By enhancing WhoMakesIt.com with BackWeb's push technology, we are creating a proactive infomediary that puts electronic component industry professionals at the absolute cutting edge of product information, access and distribution," said Brad Albright, general manager of WhoMakesIt.Com. "BackWeb enables WhoMakesIt.com to provide a new feature to the electronic component marketplace, the polite delivery of critical product information as soon as it becomes available. This service will be of great value in a constantly changing commodity industry for which accurate information is paramount."

Using only available network bandwidth, BackWeb's Polite push technology allows users to receive content with no effect on other network applications such as email, streaming media and browsing. BackWeb software also notifies recipients when content arrives, and motivates users of the service to return to WhoMakesIt.Com for further information.

"WhoMakesIt.Com is extending its business-to-business service in a way that makes this powerful infomediary a constant presence on the buyer's desktop," said Eli Barkat, chairman and CEO of BackWeb Technologies. "Pioneers like WhoMakesIt.com understand the critical importance of getting the right information to the right audience at the right time. As the competitive advantage of real-time information becomes even more evident, we expect BackWeb-enhanced infomediaries and proactive portals like WhoMakesIt.Com will become the standard for information delivery on the Web."

Unlike typical electronic industry Web sites that merely "republish" suppliers' component data, WhoMakesIt.Com eases the task of selecting products because designers can perform comprehensive parametric searches and then be guided deep within manufacturers' sites to the exact locations where the specific information resides. These unique capabilities represent a valuable time saving benefit to designers because they eliminate searching a manufacturer's home page or weeding through imprecise results from general search engines. WhoMakesIt.com allows users to: search for components by specifying multiple parameters; prioritize key product attributes; compare product information from multiple manufacturers; and then link directly to the location on the manufacturer's Web site where the specific information resides.

With BackWeb's patented Polite push technology, Global 2000 companies can deliver multimedia-rich digital packages of any size or format, including audio, video, graphics and html. BackWeb's Polite Agent™ avoids disrupting the consumer by using only available bandwidth and politely delivering the information in the background.

About BackWeb Technologies
BackWeb Technologies is a leading offline Web software company. BackWeb extends the value of technology investments by offering mobile and remote employees offline access to portals, intranets and other Web-based applications and content. The company's products reduce network costs and improve the productivity of an increasingly mobile workforce. At the core of BackWeb's products is its patented Polite® synchronization technology that can distribute large amounts of data even over narrow bandwidth connections. BackWeb® customers include market leaders such as Boehringer Ingelheim, Centocor, Eastman Kodak, GE Healthcare, Guidant, HP, KLA Tencor, Lam Research, Pfizer and more than one hundred other companies. BackWeb also has strategic reseller alliances with software industry leaders: Plumtree, SAP and IBM. The company is headquartered in San Jose, Calif. and Rosh Ha'ayin, Israel. For more information, visit www.backweb.com or call (800) 863-0100.

Statements in this news release, which are not purely historical, are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. Securities laws, including statements of beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Examples of these statements include, but are not limited to, the ability of BackWeb software to allow customers to gain mobile, disconnected use of their portals and help increase field sales and field service productivity, the integration of BackWeb software with BEA products will help developers extend portal applications for offline use without changing the way they work, and the ability of the resulting applications to help field sales and service organizations realize maximum productivity, cost savings, and process acceleration gains while disconnected from the network. Actual results could differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially include unforeseen technological issues related to use of the BackWeb software, deployment issues related to implementation, unforeseen software errors, competitive factors and business and expense factors that may affect the perceived efficiencies from use of BackWeb's products, and the risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in BackWeb's periodic reports and registration statements filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. BackWeb assumes no obligation to update any forward-looking statements contained in this press release.