Press Releases - 1999

SAN MATEO, CA, October 4, 1999 — PointBase, a leader in small-footprint Java relational databases that enable a broad range of e-commerce applications, Internet appliances and mobile solutions, announced today completion of a $7 million third round of financing. The investments, led by JK&B Capital with participation by Aspen Ventures II and AVI Capital, will support the expansion of PointBase's development, marketing and sales activities. PointBase also announced that Richard Finkelstein, executive member and chief technology officer of JK&B Capital, has joined the PointBase Board of Directors, bringing over 25 years of computing management and systems architecture experience to the post.

Lead investor JK&B Capital is a $220 million venture capital firm based in Chicago, IL. The company's founding limited partner, Charles Wang, is chairman and founder of Computer Associates International Inc. In addition, the Soros Group is a special limited partner, making its organization and resources available to JK&B Capital. Headquartered in Los Altos, CA, both AVI Capital and Aspen Ventures specialize in early stage investments in high growth segments of the information technologies industry. AVI Capital and Aspen Ventures participated in PointBase's second round of funding along with DataMirror Corporation ? one of PointBase's earliest investors. DataMirror has a strategic co-development agreement with PointBase to embed its industry-leading replication technology into the PointBase family of 100% Pure Java™ databases.

Joining PointBase's distinguished board, Richard Finkelstein is an internationally recognized authority on client-server computing, relational database management and Internet/intranet web deployment. Mr. Finkelstein founded and headed Performance Consulting, a technology consulting firm for more than ten years, serving such major clients as IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and Computer Associates. Earlier in his career, Mr. Finkelstein held management positions at CNA Insurance, Illinois Bell, Borg Warner and the City of Chicago. He has been co-chairman of DCI Database and the DCI Internet conferences and is a frequent speaker at major industry events. The author of numerous articles in leading industry and business publications, Mr. Finkelstein is co-author of the book, Oracle Power Objects Developers Guide.

"We are delighted to complete this important round of financing and to add to our board Richard Finkelstein, with his outstanding wealth of knowledge and industry stature," said Bruce Scott, PointBase founder and CEO. "PointBase has already captured tremendous interest. With these additional funds we can move our sales and product strategies forward to stay at the forefront of this fast-growing industry. Our plans include advancing our synchronization technology which, coupled with our integration with DataMirror's Transformation Server, will ensure that customers can integrate PointBase with virtually any other databases dispersed across their organizations."

"This investment promises to bring about the next wave in database technology innovation", noted Finkelstein. "All Java-based e-commerce and mobile applications can utilize the PointBase Java relational engine at the core of their technology for data management over the Internet."

Recent announcements extend PointBase to palm-tops and global networks This announcement follows a number of product, customer and alliance wins for PointBaseluding the deployment of PointBase across global networks and onto hand-held computing devices. The PointBase Mobile Edition database is now available for the Psion 5mx hand-held computer, bringing advanced Oracle-compatible data management down to a personal level. In addition, the PointBase Mobile Edition and Network Server are compatible with Java on Red Hat Linux, opening up an opportunity to provide embedded data management for Linux users worldwide.

Furthermore, PointBase recently announced full support for the Unicode standard, allowing developers using PointBase to deploy multi-language applications on a global basis. PointBase's multi-level implementation of Unicode allows developers to select language support for individual database columns, tables, database schemas, or entire databases, depending upon application requirements.

About PointBase
The PointBase family of 100% Pure Java embedded data management products enables a new class of Java-based networked applications to support e-commerce, Web-based mobile workers, and Internet devices such as Web/cable set-top boxes. PointBase provides the lowest cost of ownership by delivering robust, platform-independent data storage with breakthroughs in ease of use, data replication, near-zero administration, and portability. PointBase was established in 1998 by Bruce Scott, co-founder of Oracle Corporation and Gupta/Centura Software, and Jeff Richey, one of the key developers of the Sybase SQL database server. The management team includes industry veterans from IBM, Oracle, Sybase, Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems. More information about PointBase can be obtained on the World Wide Web at http://www.pointbase.com.
 

Note to Editors — PointBase is a trademark of PointBase All other product, trademark, company or service names mentioned herein are the property of their respective owners.