BackWeb Technologies Revolutionizes the Front Office Solution Market With the Introduction of the BackWeb Sales Accelerator Application

New Release of Version 5.0 of the BackWeb Foundation enables BackWeb Sales Accelerator to refocus the Extended Sales Force for greater results

SAN JOSE, Calif. (Dec. 7, 1998) - BackWeb™ Technologies today announced the introduction of the BackWeb Sales Accelerator, the first in a series of front-office applications targeted at the sales chain, which includes salespeople, partners and customers. The BackWeb Sales Accelerator enables companies to proactively deliver business-critical information to facilitate action. The BackWeb Sales Accelerator is further enhanced by new features of the BackWeb Foundation technology, version 5.0, also being announced today.

By providing the capability to adapt more quickly to customer needs and changing competitive environments, the BackWeb Sales Accelerator helps companies to mobilize faster, generate more sales by being more focused and knowledgeable, and strengthen existing customer relationships. The BackWeb Foundation features unparalleled communications technology that allows proactive, efficient delivery of any size or type of information, to users both inside and outside the corporation. In addition, BackWeb's Polite Agent™ technology takes advantage of unused network capacity to automatically deliver information in the background. It therefore does not interfere with other networked applications or performance.

"The BackWeb Sales Accelerator, our first step into the applications area, builds on our core expertise of attention management and proactive information delivery," said Eli Barkat, CEO of BackWeb. "Using the BackWeb Foundation, we have created a compelling application, based on input from large corporate customers such as Rite Aid, Compaq and Cisco, that provides a complete solution for sales and marketing executives who need to focus the sales chain on new, changing information and competitive environments."

Global systems integrator and IT solutions provider, Cable & Wireless Omnes (www.cwomnes.net), a joint venture between Schlumberger and Cable & Wireless, chose BackWeb Sales Accelerator to empower its sales force by delivering business-critical information to its worldwide customer base. "Ensuring that our sales force has the latest information about the products and services we sell is one of our biggest challenges," said Paul David, vice president, Intranet and Network Solutions Cable & Wireless Omnes. "No other products in the marketplace can compete with BackWeb's ability to notify and communicate with the user and synchronize data, software and content globally in order to support enterprise, mission-critical activities. In addition, the product is easy to deploy, and training time with the sales force was minimal," added David.

About BackWeb Sales Accelerator
The BackWeb Sales Accelerator features several modules designed to solve the specific business problems facing today's sales and marketing executives:

Strategic Publishing Manager
To avoid suffering from information overload, sales people have become conditioned to ignore much of the data that is presented to them through e-mail, web sites and faxes. As a result, sales forces are increasingly missing time-sensitive and critical communications that can seriously affect an organization's competitiveness and market share. The Strategic Publishing Manager module of the BackWeb Sales Accelerator ensures that critical information is delivered from appropriate sources in a way that captures the users' attention. This module allows users to create high-impact 'Flash' messages that can contain any file or media type, and can be automatically delivered, regardless of the application a salesperson or partner is using at that time. Flash notifications can be graphically customized for various levels of visual impact according to level of attention required. Administrators have the ability to set privileges for editing and publishing content. This guarantees high-quality content standards while allowing companies to capture all truly important information, no matter where it resides.

Automated Marketing Encyclopedia
In order to excel in the competitive marketplace, it is critical that sales forces and partners be armed with the most up-to-date pricing, availability and product information. The Automated Marketing Encyclopedia module allows users, regardless of location, to automatically receive updates to documents they have subscribed to such as price lists, marketing presentations and product fact sheets - as soon as they are published. Publishing is done easily by any user who is granted rights. The result is increased effectiveness for marketing and sales departments, a better-prepared sales force and lower costs of marketing. Remote sales forces, as well as partners, are constantly informed, without costly distribution of CD's and printed material.

Market Intelligence Manager
To stay ahead of the competition, sales forces must be able to immediately adapt to changes in the competitive landscape. The Market Intelligence Manager gathers information about competitors, customers and the marketplace from any Internet or intranet location, for example, customer earnings announcements and competitor product changes. It continuously monitors these sites and immediately delivers any changes in the information. This module enables the sales force and partners to react as quickly as possible to market events without having to spend time searching for information in newspapers, trade magazines, intranets or on the Internet.

About BackWeb Foundation Version 5.0
Version 5.0 has been enhanced to make the BackWeb Foundation more flexible, scalable and easier to deploy across the enterprise. BackWeb has extended its communication capabilities with the following new features.

Polite Neighborcast™
Neighborcast eliminates the need for redundant WAN file transfer by placing a single copy of any size file in a LAN for distribution throughout the local network. This new patent-pending communication software dramatically increases the accessibility of any size of file by making each client PC a file server. After the BackWeb Server delivers updated information to one BackWeb Client, the clients can share it with one another, almost instantaneously. As a result, global file distribution is fast and network efficient.

Polite Upstream
When the BackWeb Server sends a Flash or file to the clients, Polite Upstream enables the clients to send comments, corrections or other input back up to the server. For example, sales managers can collect and organize important information from their reps. Marketing can deliver a promotion and order form to customers to be electronically returned for fulfillment.

Lite Installer
Lite Installer is a small installer file that uses BackWeb's polite delivery technology to download and install all components of a BackWeb Client on a user's system. If a download is interrupted, the Lite Installer will pick up from the exact point it left off, upon re-start. Lite Installer makes BackWeb easy to deploy across the enterprise, even for remote users such as sales forces and partners.

Availability and Pricing
The BackWeb Sales Accelerator and BackWeb Foundation version 5.0 will be available in December 1998. For pricing and licensing, please contact your BackWeb sales representative or Reseller

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.