REDMOND, Wash., and PHOENIX -- April 25, 2000 - Microsoft Corp. and InfoImage Inc., a leading decision portal provider, today announced the delivery of freedom™ 2, fulfilling the vision the two companies announced in October 1999.

InfoImage provides enterprise digital dashboard solutions using the InfoImage freedom 2 B2B Decision Server and the freedom 2 B2E Decision Server. freedom 2 uses the Microsoft^® knowledge management platform, which includes Office 2000 desktop productivity software and Microsoft server applications. Customers of all sizes, including Mitsubishi Fuso Truck of America Inc., Bestfoods, Frank Russell Co., Rhythms NetConnections Inc., click2learn.com Inc., LoanCity.com Inc. and Visioneer Inc., have selected the solution to pare costs, improve communication and sharpen decision-making for knowledge workers.

"Fortune 500 companies are looking for a way to empower their knowledge workers and enhance business velocity through knowledge management solutions," said Randy Eckel, president and CEO of InfoImage. "freedom 2 was designed to meet the needs of these companies using the flexibility and scalability of the Microsoft platform to create enterprisewide solutions."

"This release is a significant milestone in the strategic alliance between Microsoft and InfoImage and uniquely addresses the needs of our large customers to connect knowledge workers to critical information and to each other," said Jeff Raikes, group vice president of Worldwide Sales and Support at Microsoft. "InfoImage freedom 2 leverages end users' familiarity with Microsoft Office and the comprehensive services of the Microsoft server application platform to provide a secure, scalable and manageable next-generation portal solution."

Digital dashboards help people work more efficiently by consolidating key information from disparate data sources -- including corporate databases, enterprise resource planning systems, personal e-mail and calendaring, and the Web -- into a unified desktop view. InfoImage freedom 2 takes this concept to the enterprise level through a highly scalable architecture with advanced functionality for administration and personalization, plus an extensive service offering for tailored business system integration. By automating the interaction between information, people and applications, InfoImage goes beyond traditional static corporate portals to improve the entire decision-making process.

"We wanted to create an environment where Mitsubishi employees, dealers and partners were able to share and access important information," said James Peary, director of Corporate Systems at Mitsubishi Fuso Trucks. "The InfoImage freedom decision portal will enable us to empower our constituent groups with quick and easy access to critical information they need to improve business efficiency and make better decisions."

"The corporate portal industry is saturated with companies offering solutions, ranging from business intelligence tools to search engines," said Gene Phifer, research director of Internet Strategies at Gartner Group Inc. "In today's fast-paced Internet economy, Global 1,000 companies are looking for a robust portal that assists their knowledge workers through each step of the decision-making process. They need a browser-based application that enables them to gain access to, collaborate with, and take action on a wide variety of business-related information regardless of the workers' locations or department affiliations, the location of the information, or the format in which the information is stored."

freedom 2 Features and Functionality

The InfoImage freedom decision portal is the only product on the market that streamlines and automates the entire decision-making process. freedom 2 provides this advanced functionality to both internal and external users with two server products:

• The freedom 2 B2E Decision Server is the next-generation intranet server that gives users a secure and flexible portal platform to identify facts, collaborate and take action for better, faster business decisions.
• The freedom 2 B2B Decision Server enables users to make decisions across the value chain and communicate with other B2B and B2E servers regardless of the location. Expanded features include enhanced security and access control, flexibility in user interface support (such as a range of browser releases), and configurability of the extranet user interface.

Key differentiating features of the freedom decision portal include the following:

• Personalization. freedom 2 personalization enables users to choose the content and configure the layout of the freedom Center™ interface and provides them with Peripheral Vision™, single-click access to related information and people while navigating the system. This allows users to research answers to questions that invariably come up during use of the decision portal.
• Federated portal architecture. freedom 2 federated architecture allows customers to deploy their portals on an as-needed basis and allows the cumulative processing power of the federation to effectively load-balance the needs of the users.
• Data integration. freedom 2 provides users with a multitude of data integration options for maximizing information flow into and out of the decision portal.
• Collaboration. freedom 2 Collaboration Manager allows users to share content with and solicit ideas from other users.
• Publishing and subscription. freedom 2 offers flexible and scalable content publishing and subscription of information regardless of its location within or outside of the enterprise.
• Knowledge Maps and Knowledge Map-driven searches. freedom 2 Knowledge Maps are graphical tools that categorize and standardize all the sources of knowledge within an organization, including structured data, unstructured data and people.