Lotus and BackWeb Announce Plans to Bundle BackWeb Server Software with Domino.Merchant 2.0 Server Pack

Enterprise Push Solutions Streamline E-Commerce Marketing and Communications Programs

NEW YORK, December 10, 1997 -- BackWeb Technologies and Lotus Development Corporation announced today that Lotus plans to bundle BackWeb's 4.0 Server software with Domino.Merchant 2.0 Server Pack, Lotus' e-commerce solution for growing businesses. BackWeb's server coupled with Domino.Merchant will enable businesses to streamline marketing and communications programs targeted toward their e-commerce customers. Organizations that use BackWeb with the Domino.Merchant 2.0 Server Pack will be able to integrate personalized, direct marketing programs with their e-commerce solutions to enhance customer communications. In addition, Lotus and BackWeb have also reached an agreement allowing Lotus to resell BackWeb's products directly to its business partners and customers.

"Reaching the right customer with the right information is critical to the success of e-commerce," said Eli Barkat, BackWeb's chief executive officer. "The combination of these solutions will offer Lotus and BackWeb customers a competitive advantage for their e-commerce programs."

"Lotus is committed to providing its customers with a single source for a complete e-commerce solution, enabling organizations to expand their e-commerce infrastructure as they grow," said Keith McCall, director, Domino Applications, Lotus Development Corporation. "Businesses today are looking at new, innovative ways to communicate with their customers. By combining BackWeb push technology with Domino.Merchant, BackWeb and Lotus are helping customers achieve the full value of "push" in an e-commerce setting -- including the ability to facilitate online advertising, notification, and softgoods fulfillment."

Domino.Merchant 2.0 Server Pack is a complete, customizable software solution that integrates the Lotus Domino server platform with electronic commerce applications, allowing organizations to deploy commerce solutions quickly, easily, and with minimal Internet programming experience. Domino Merchant 2.0 Server Pack allows companies to create an online storefront where customers can access catalogs, search for products and information and make purchases.

"As businesses continue to turn to e-commerce and Domino.Merchant to bring down the cost of doing business and to simplify the buying process for their customers, BackWeb's solution will become increasingly important," said Barkat. "Businesses using BackWeb with Domino.Merchant will develop personalized, direct marketing programs, enhancing customer communications and reducing the number of steps associated with ordering products and services online."

BackWeb Streamlines E-Commerce Marketing and Communication
Businesses using BackWeb can send news, product information, special offers, program changes and collateral directly to their business partners, customers' desktops, or within the company itself. This functionality will allow companies using BackWeb with Domino.Merchant 2.0 Server Pack to streamline marketing and communications programs, which, in turn can strengthen their customer relationships and increase program effectiveness. BackWeb ensures that when an organization's customers use BackWeb they can receive up-to-the-minute product and promotional information. As customers receive new information they can immediately respond, leveraging the total Domino.Merchant solution to order products and get questions answered. BackWeb also streamlines internal processes for companies using Domino.Merchant 2.0 Server Pack, through file-sharing capabilities. With BackWeb, companies can enable workgroups to share relevant information and reports. This ensures that the people in an organization who need specific information are getting it in a timely manner.

How Customers Use the BackWeb Client
The BackWeb client/server combination enables corporations to automate delivery of customized knowledge extracted from their own corporate databases, or from selected target sites on the Internet. The BackWeb server allows IS to retain control of how users use the BackWeb system for knowledge delivery, by retaining control, delegating to the department or empowering the users themselves. The BackWeb client allows corporations and users to define what information they want and how they want to receive it. Users are empowered to request alerts, search and filter the information delivered. BackWeb delivers information directly to the user's desktop and uses its Polite Agent to ensure that information downloads do not interrupt a user's normal workflow.

BackWeb's Polite Agent manages the file transfers and updates over modems and through firewalls, ensuring that BackWeb's delivery does not interrupt the user. The Polite Agent identifies when a user's network connection is idle and transparently sends information in the background at those times. The Polite Agent also sends information in packets so if the user interrupts the transfer, the Polite Agent can easily stop the transfer and pick-up later where it left off. For this reason, the Polite Agent makes downloading large files painless

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.