Student Online And Oracle To Create E-Stores For Colleges And Universities; Alliance Will Earn E-Commerce Revenues for Institutions of Higher Education

Business Wire, May 3, 2000

Business Editors, Education Writers

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 3, 2000

StudentOnline.com, Inc., a higher education intranet portal company, today announced an alliance with Oracle Corp., the largest provider of software that powers the Internet, to create revenue-generating online stores for a select number of institutions of higher education. Using Student Online intranet portals and Oracle(R) software applications, colleges and universities will have the ultimate destination site from which students, faculty, administrators and alumni can shop online for an array of products and services, with a percentage of the revenues going directly to each institution.

By using Student Online's portals, Oracle8i(TM) Enterprise Edition software and iStore - Oracle's complete, end-to-end Internet commerce solution for creating, running, and maintaining Internet sites to sell goods and services - institutions will derive revenue from consumer products (CD's, DVD's, books, etc.) they sell at their own online stores. Each institution will work with a full-service fulfillment company that will ship a wide range of school-branded products directly to each user. The prices of these school-branded products will be equal to or lower than those of other Internet vendors.

"Student Online's technology can easily integrate Oracle's exclusive web-native applications to provide a scalable resource for colleges and universities," said Lee Ramsayer, vice president for Higher Education Sales at Oracle. "We are committed to providing our customers with the services they need to help them succeed in today's rapidly changing technology environment, and look forward to working with Student Online and other student portal companies to bring added value to our customers."

Further, in addition to e-commerce, institutions will be able to use Student Online applications such as web-based email, personalized organizers and its inter-campus network.

"By working with a company as established and respected as Oracle, we expect that our advertising-free e-commerce portals will be the ultimate destination site for college constituents throughout the country," said Sunil Deshmukh, CEO of Student Online. "We're delighted that Oracle shares our foresight and willingness to continually find ways for schools to utilize new technology that facilitates the education process for both students and faculty."

About Student Online

Student Online is the first Intranet portal company in higher education that provides students, faculty, administrators, and alumni at its partner institutions with secure Web and wireless access to on, off, and inter-campus academic and social information. It also is the only such company that offers these features, plus e-commerce capabilities, in an advertising-free environment. Student Online allows users to buy products and services at the lowest cost through a vendor-neutral, collective-buying agreement that shares revenue with institutions. The company also has created a unified platform to distribute and retrieve university-wide information more effectively, thereby transforming the college campus into a truly interactive community. Student Online's deployment of the latest web-based and wireless technology enables students, faculty, administrators, and alumni to meet their communication needs with limited budget, time and staff resources. Additional information about Student Online is available at www.studentonline.com.