Inprise/Borland Forms New Company to Open-Source InterBase 6

The executive team of the new company, called InterBase, will be led by Ann Harrison as president, Paul Beach as vice president of sales and marketing, and Jim Starkey, the founding architect of the original InterBase product, will serve as the technology software architectural advisor for InterBase.

InterBase is a high-performance, structured query language (SQL) database that is well known for its low-maintenance, enterprise-class relational database management system (RDMS). Designed for business-critical, mobile computing and Internet-based applications on Linux, Windows NT, Solaris, and UNIX, InterBase supports many high-profile customers such as Nokia, Societi Generale and Deutsche Telekom.

"We plan to finance InterBase with funding from the announced Inprise/Borland Venture Fund, announced last month, as well as several of our venture capital partners," said Dale Fuller, interim president and CEO of Inprise/Borland. "By combining the InterBase technology with an experienced management team in a start-up environment, we are enabling users to leverage the power of this world-class database for multiple platforms, including Linux, Solaris, and Windows NT. We believe the open-source process will greatly increase the distribution of InterBase in the marketplace."

"The Internet economy demands database-driven applications," said Harrison. "InterBase has always been a fast, low-hassle database. As an open-source product it will move out of its current niche and become a force in the new economy."

As president, Ann Harrison is responsible for helping InterBase develop and implement a strategic plan for achieving substantial long-term growth in the open-source market. Harrison brings over 15 years of database experience to the new evolution of InterBase 6, and will be responsible for a wide array of technology and business initiatives for the company. With Jim Starkey and Don DePalma, she formed the original company that developed the innovative database architecture that became InterBase.

Prior to his appointment to VP of sales and marketing for InterBase, Paul Beach was the general manager at Inprise/Borland for the InterBase product. Based in the United Kingdom, Beach was responsible for sales, marketing and business development activities for the product. During his tenure at Inprise/Borland, Beach increased revenues of InterBase by US$4 million annually.

The source code for InterBase 6 is currently scheduled to be available mid-2000 and will be open-sourced under the MPL 1.1 model.

About InterBase 6
Since 1985, InterBase has provided technologically superior relational database solutions to meet the business-critical database needs of companies like Nokia, MCI, Northern Telecom, Bear Stearns, the Money Store, the US Army, NASA, and Boeing. Through its ease of use, maintainability, simplified deployment and small footprint, InterBase has become the preferred embedded database solution.

About Inprise/Borland Corporation
Inprise/Borland is a leading provider of Internet access infrastructure and application development tool and services for all major platforms, including Linux, Solaris and Windows. Founded in 1983, Inprise is headquartered in the Silicon Valley, California, with operations worldwide. To learn more call the company at (800) 632-2864.

Note: Forward-looking statements in this release, including but not limited to those concerning Inprise's future market developments, positions in such markets, future products, product-availability dates, and the potential performance, features of or benefits to be derived from the Company's products, involve a number of uncertainties and risks, and actual events or results may differ materially. Factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially include, among others, the following: possible disruptive effects of organizational or personnel changes in the Company, shifts in customer demand, market acceptance of the Company's new or enhanced products, delays in scheduled product-availability dates, actions, or announcements by competitors, software errors, general business conditions, and market-development and growth rates in the client/server and Internet-software markets, and other factors described in the Company's SEC reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q.