Lotus and BackWeb to Push Personalized Broadcast Capabilities to Intranets

Companies to Unite Domino-based Business Applications with BackWeb Personalized Broadcasting Technologies

NEW YORK, Dec.11, 1996 -- Lotus and BackWeb Technologies today announced a strategic partnership that will bring the power of Lotus Domino, the first e-mail and groupware server for the Internet, to BackWeb's next generation personalized broadcasting software. Lotus and BackWeb will combine Domino.Broadcast's intranet application development and hosting services and BackWeb's innovative push and pull broadcasting capabilities. This combination will deliver content-ready, intranet broadcasting with interactive links to business applications hosted on the Domino server. In addition, through BackWeb, the solution will alert users that the content they have requested has arrived; BackWeb's software is designed to broadcast graphical "Flash" alerts over whatever Windows application in which the user is working.

"Broadcasting is fast becoming a 'must have' technology for businesses that need to receive up-to-the-minute, targeted information both quickly and easily," said Larry Moore, senior vice president of Lotus' Emerging Products Group. "Lotus recognizes BackWeb as a leader in personalized broadcasting software and we plan to Domino-enable their innovative technologies to give customers the ability to create strategic, Internet and intranet broadcasting applications. Our goal is to unite Domino, the first groupware and e-mail server for the 'Net, with a state-of-the-art broadcasting vehicle to deliver interactive solutions that are capable of alerting, arming and mobilizing companies with information that is vital to maintain their competitive edge."

"The real key to fulfilling the one-to-one promise of content push is making it easy for companies to integrate Internet and intranet broadcasting into their business strategies and applications," said Eli Barkat, CEO of BackWeb. "Our long term goal is to connect corporate data into BackWeb's platform to give companies the ability to easily develop automated processes for broadcasting corporate content. This partnership with Lotus is a giant step in that direction, as the combination of BackWeb and Domino makes it possible for all the corporate content and business applications hosted on Domino servers to be leveraged for automatic delivery to and feedback from employees, suppliers, distributors and customers."

Domino.Broadcast: New Technology for Intranet Publishing
Domino.Broadcast is part of a family of products designed to extend the Domino server by providing a customizable framework for Internet and intranet-enabled business applications. Domino.Broadcast connects the Domino Web server with broadcast technologies to deliver content-ready, intranet broadcasting applications that are optimized for interactive links to business applications hosted on the Domino Web server. The broadcasting applications improve the process of creating company alerts by leveraging Domino's distributed authoring and application development capabilities. Lotus has created a Domino.Broadcast Technology Partners Program that includes industry leaders such as BackWeb, PointCast, Verity and Worldcom to deliver Domino-enabled business applications that are integrated with the customers broadcast technology of choice.

Lotus Domino 4.5, the first e-mail and groupware server for the Internet that makes possible a broad range of secure, interactive business solutions for the Internet and Intranet. With Domino, businesses may rapidly build, deploy and manage applications which engage coworkers, partners and customers in on-line collaboration and coordination of critical business activities.

Lotus Development Corporation, founded in 1982, is a subsidiary of IBM Corporation. Lotus offers high quality software products and services that reflect the company's unique understanding of the new ways in which individuals and businesses must work together to achieve success. Lotus' innovative approach is evident in a new class of applications that allow users to access and communicate information in ways never before possible, both within and beyond organizational boundaries. Lotus now markets its products in more than 80 countries worldwide and provides numerous professional consulting, support and education services through the Lotus Services Group.

BackWeb provides easy-to-use software tools that enable companies to build broadcast programming channels on the Internet and thereby create one-to-one relationships with customers and prospects. While early players in the personalized broadcasting category have been content aggregators or platform-specific providers, BackWeb's approach is to give channel owners the tools they need to regularly deliver their own rich content and software, in any format and on any platform, directly to customers. BackWeb's ground-breaking "Polite Agent" delivery technology doubles Internet users' bandwidth by sending content during their idle on-line time, and its "Flash" display technology enables users to be alerted to the background arrival of content in whatever application they're using.

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.