GroundWork Subscriber Base Passes 200 Mark

San Francisco, CA — October 11, 2006 — GroundWork Open Source, Inc. (www.groundworkopensource.com), the leader in open source-based IT operations management, today announced that with two months still remaining in Q4, 2006 has already been a banner growth year for the company. In 2006, GroundWork's subscription customer base has already increased over 100% from 2005, to more than 200 subscribers, and the company has also created a solid foundation for both domestic and international channel sales.

"Open Source's most successful historical examples —Red Hat and JBoss —both generated substantial early revenues in their respective operating system and application server markets," said Ranga Rangchari, CEO of GroundWork. "GroundWork has emerged as the only commercial open source vendor in the IT operations management space that has generated substantial revenue, and is clearly the most legitimate threat to the incumbent, 'Big 4' proprietary vendors."

Mainstream Customer Traction

Open source adopters are going beyond just bleeding edge technical companies. New GroundWork customers such as Royal Bank of Canada (financial), Giant Eagle (retail) and UNC at Charlotte (education) are proof that open source IT operations management software is entering the mainstream.

GroundWork integrates, enhances and develops leading open source software to deliver enterprise-class IT operations management solutions. Offering the widest range of support for operating systems (Linux, Unix, Windows and others), applications, and networked devices, organizations can leverage the flexibility and low cost of open source tools to achieve enterprise-level availability, performance and operational efficiency at a fraction of the cost of commercial software.

GroundWork Launches Version 5 of GroundWork Monitor Product Family —Introduces GroundWork Monitor Small Business and Network Management Suite

In September, GroundWork announced version 5 of the GroundWork Monitor product line, including GroundWork Monitor Professional, a major upgrade to the company's flagship solution for monitoring the most demanding IT infrastructures. In July, GroundWork introduced GroundWork Monitor Small Business -- tailored for organizations with up to 50 servers or networked devices to monitor -- to its product line that also includes GroundWork Monitor Open Source (which is free for download).

With the release of the GroundWork Network Management Suite, GroundWork Monitor Professional customers can take advantage of critical network management functionality including auto discovery, active network mapping and sophisticated network protocol analysis.

Launch of GroundWork Global Partner Network Channel Program

Earlier this year, GroundWork also launched its Global Partner Network (http://www.groundworkopensource.com/partners/), and secured more than 20 new solution provider and integrator partners -- including Morse (Germany), DSP (UK), Revolution Linux (Canada) and Managed Services Provider Mentora Group -- to further increase domestic and international sales distribution.

"Growth of our customer base, the number of monitored devices and the complexity of custom monitors required to ensure availability of the applications we support forced us to look for alternatives," said Jim DeFrank, Mentora Group's Vice President and General Manager of Application Hosting. "We monitor thousands of points with unique alerts and response rules. GroundWork's consolidated monitoring framework increases our efficiency and enables us to focus on application availability instead of 'managing the monitors.' It integrates open source tools we trust into a complete solution equal to or better than other products in a higher price range."

"There are certain criteria that play into the vendor partners we pursue from both a technology and business side," said Jean-Guy Roberge, VP of Customer Relations at Revolution Linux, a Canadian IT infrastructure solution provider. "If we're going to stand behind a technology, we need to make sure it stands up on its own. Is it flexible? Can it scale? At the same time, we are laser-focused on providing our customers a superior, yet cost-effective solution. GroundWork satisfies all of these issues that are so important to us while providing solid domain expertise that we can leverage with our customers."

GroundWork Announces Formation of Open Source Council

2006 also marked a year of substantial advisory board additions for GroundWork. In Q3, the company added the founders of popular open source monitoring projects -- Cacti, Dojo, Ganglia, MRTG, NeDi, RRDTool, Sendpage and SmokePing — to the new "Open Source Council."

About GroundWork

San Francisco-based GroundWork Open Source, Inc. (www.groundworkopensource.com) is the leader in the fast-growth market for open source IT operations management software. The company integrates, enhances and develops leading open source software to deliver comprehensive IT operations management solutions. With GroundWork solutions, enterprises leverage the flexibility and low cost of open source tools to achieve enterprise-level availability, performance and operational efficiency at a fraction of the cost of commercial software. GroundWork customers represent a variety of industries, including manufacturing, government, financial services, education, and high technology. GroundWork investors are Mayfield and Canaan Partners.

Contact:

Ray George
Page One PR
[email protected]
650-922-3825