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GroundWork In The UK

Press Release

GroundWork Continues International Sales Momentum With New Office and Partner Program in the United Kingdom

LONDON—September 5, 2006 — GroundWork Open Source, Inc., the U.S. market leader in open source-based IT operations management solutions, today announced the launch of GroundWork Monitor in the U.K. market. With hundreds of customers in North America, GroundWork Monitor is the continent's most widely-used open source approach to IT operations management, displacing expensive proprietary solutions such as IBM Tivoli, BMC Patrol, HP Openview, and CA Unicenter.

In the UK, recent reports from Gartner have indicated that open source software will displace as much as 22 percent of 'traditional' software over the next five years (http://www.computing.co.uk/computing/news/2158224/open-source-growth-predicted) GroundWork Monitor is an IT operations platform that takes advantage of the latest open source innovations in a framework architected specifically for mid-market and enterprise line-of-business organizations -- and retails for a fraction of the typical cost of equivalent, proprietary IT operations management software solutions.

"We are in a unique position to offer businesses the first open source-based System and Service Management solution aimed directly at meeting the functionality requirements of demanding enterprises whilst slashing software license spend," said Jim Hogg, GroundWork's new Territory Manager in the UK. "For users this means a much quicker time to value and a far lower total cost of ownership. The opportunity to disrupt the economics of IT Systems and Service Management is an exciting one for IT departments, resellers and service providers."

Hogg joins Groundwork Open Source as Territory Manager responsible for expanding GroundWork's customer portfolio throughout North Western EMEA. With more than 10 years' experience in establishing and growing customer portfolios in green-field areas for companies including AcuCorp Inc., NetIQ (NTIQ) and NimSoft, Jim's role is to drive GroundWork's growth, establishing an ecosystem of dynamic resellers and managed service providers.

As a recent eWeek review noted, GroundWork Monitor Professional "holds its own" with the "Big Four" platforms, but Big Four solutions "can't hold a candle" to GroundWork's price. In the UK, The GroundWork Partner Network will offer new partners the margins and support to seize the tremendous market opportunity around open-sourced based IT operations.

GroundWork is currently seeking channel partners in the UK with IT infrastructure monitoring domain expertise to join the GroundWork Partner Network. To learn more (and for contact info), interested candidates should visit: http://www.groundworkopensource.com/partners/.

In August at the LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco, GroundWork announced the first "Open Source Council" -- comprised exclusively of lead developers from today's best-of-breed open source IT infrastructure and network monitoring projects. Initial members of GroundWork's newly-formed Open Source Council include the creators and overseers of some of today's most popular open source monitoring and management technologies, including: Tobi Oetiker (RRDtool, MRTG, SmokePing), Remo Rickli (NeDi), Ian Berry (Cacti), Matt Massie (Ganglia), Alex Russell (Dojo), Kees Cook (Sendpage).

By providing ongoing guidance to GroundWork for its product roadmap, the council underscores GroundWork's commitment to provide the very best and most comprehensive IT monitoring solutions -- now and in the future.

About GroundWork

San Francisco-based GroundWork Open Source, Inc. (www.groundworkopensource.com) 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.