IT Monitoring Software

Emeryville, CA — October 17, 2005 — GroundWork Open Source Solutions, Inc., a leader in open source IT operations management solutions, today announced the availability of GroundWork Monitor 4, a major new release of its end-to-end, open source-based IT monitoring solution. Based on leading open source tools such as Nagios, Jetspeed and MySQL, GroundWork Monitor 4 is an enterprise-ready IT monitoring solution that is quick to deploy and easy to manage. Unlike leading IT monitoring solutions that overload users with unnecessary complexity and are costly to maintain, GroundWork Monitor 4's $16,000 annual subscription offers the right balance of simplicity, performance and affordability in a fully supported solution. Key new features of GroundWork Monitor 4 include an advanced new architecture that integrates and enhances the product's underlying open source tools; a new, common user interface; an integrated configuration tool for easy deployment; and a developer toolkit that enables advanced users to extend the product.

"GroundWork Monitor 4 is an ideal solution for companies that want a comprehensive, centralized monitoring solution that can grow with their infrastructure. With GroundWork Monitor 4, companies benefit from the innovation, cost advantage and extensibility of open source, while enjoying the support and customer service associated with traditional commercial software," said Ranga Rangachari, CEO of GroundWork. "The new architecture of GroundWork Monitor 4 provides the platform for a full open source IT management suite and gets us closer to our vision of a totally open data center," said Rangachari.

New Architecture Brings Together Three GroundWork Open Source Projects GroundWork Monitor 4's new architecture brings together into one complete solution the three open source tools that GroundWork launched over the last four months. These tools include:

• A new user interface for displaying monitoring status data from Nagios and other monitoring tools (GroundWork Status Viewer)
• A middleware layer that captures and normalizes monitoring data from disparate open and closed source tools (GroundWork Foundation)
• A powerful configuration tool and device profile library that simplifies the task of configuring an enterprise-class monitoring system (GroundWork Monitor Architect)

Customers Embrace GroundWork Monitor 4

GroundWork Monitor 4 has been in development for more than a year and has been tested and/or deployed by more than 20 customers, including Sierra Pacific Industries, a third generation forestry products company; MACTEC, an engineering and construction firm; Ariba, a leading provider of spend management solutions; and Yodlee, a technology solution provider for financial services companies.

"Our forestry business requires a widely-dispersed network, and it was becoming increasingly difficult to monitor each of the sites to ensure they were up and running," said Kevin Nadin, network administrator for Sierra Pacific Industries. "With GroundWork Monitor 4, we're spending minutes rather than hours keeping tabs on the network, which frees us up to focus on more strategic activities."

New Features of GroundWork Monitor 4:

New features of GroundWork Monitor 4 include:

• Unified User Interface: A consistent user interface unifies the product's underlying open source tools, providing improved access to critical data needed by operators and managers to effectively manage their IT infrastructure.
• Integrated Configuration Tool: GroundWork's open source configuration tool is integrated into Groundwork Monitor 4 along with a growing list of pre-defined configuration "profiles" that simplify and speed up configuration of systems, network devices and applications.
• Extensible Architecture with Developer Toolkit: GroundWork Monitor 4 pre-integrates and enhances leading open source IT management software while providing tools for users to integrate additional open source and commercial tools and write custom views, reports and dashboards.

Deployment and Support

GroundWork Monitor 4 is sold as an annual subscription, pre-packaged with phone- and VPN-based configuration assistance, updates and technical support. Unlike complex monitoring systems, GroundWork Monitor can be deployed in a matter of days so companies realize value quickly. On-site deployment services are also available from GroundWork and its partners.

Licensing and Availability

GroundWork Monitor 4 is currently available directly through GroundWork and its worldwide distribution partner, Novell.

Continued Company Momentum

The announcement of GroundWork Monitor 4 comes on the heels several recent company milestones, including the launch of three free open source projects; the signing of a worldwide distribution agreement with Novell; the appointment of Ranga Rangachari as the company's new CEO; the closing of $8.5 million in Series B financing with Mayfield and Canaan Partners; and the addition of the company's 70th customer.

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.