Groundwork And Novell Open Source Solutions

Emeryville, CA — August 9, 2005 — GroundWork Open Source Solutions, Inc., a leader in open source IT management solutions, announced today that it has been named as one of six open source application providers to participate in Novell's Market Start program being announced at LinuxWorld today. Novell's Market Start program is designed to align open source solutions with Novell's open source operating infrastructure in order to accelerate the adoption of open source and give Novell customers exposure to lower cost, feature equivalent software alternatives. As part of the Market Start program, GroundWork will have access to Novell's worldwide distribution channels and its extensive marketing and support infrastructure.

"GroundWork and Novell understand customers' demonstrated need for powerful but cost-effective tools for managing IT infrastructure. Working together, we are delivering practical and affordable open source solutions that change the economics of IT operations management," said Ranga Rangachari, CEO of GroundWork.

"Companies are ready to adopt open source software into the core of their operations," said Bill Hewitt, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer for Novell. "By combining open source innovation with our worldwide ecosystem, we can provide customers with the benefit of open source innovation and the peace of mind to implement and deploy these solutions with confidence."

Under the Market Start program, GroundWork and Novell — which provides infrastructure software and services to over 50,000 enterprises in 43 countries — will provide Novell customers with enterprise-class open source IT operations management solutions. The first offering — GroundWork Monitor — provides monitoring and management of all components in an enterprise's IT infrastructure — including servers, network devices, databases and applications. GroundWork Monitor offers the functionality of expensive IT management software solutions at a fraction of the cost and without the burden of vendor lock-in or closed proprietary architectures. GroundWork Monitor — which runs on SUSE Linux among other platforms — integrates and enhances best-of-breed open source components and is delivered as a comprehensive and supported solution that is easy to install, operate and manage.

About GroundWork Open Source Solutions

GroundWork Open Source Solutions, Inc. (www.groundworkopensource.com) develops, integrates and enhances leading open source software to deliver comprehensive open source IT monitoring 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 is based in Emeryville, Calif. and its investors include Mayfield and Canaan Partners.