Optivo Corporation Forms Advisory Board; Merchandising, E-Commerce, Pricing and Data Warehousing Experts to Join Forces With E-Business Profitability Solutions Company

Business Wire, Feb 27, 2001

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 27, 2001

Optivo Corp., which offers software enabling e-businesses to maximize profitability by rapidly responding to changing market conditions, today announced the formation of its Advisory Board. This team of advisors, tapped by Optivo for the group's collective e-business expertise, will help the company to identify current needs and opportunities.

"Optivo's advisors are recognized leaders in a cross-section of areas critical to our customers' success, including merchandising, e-commerce, pricing and data warehousing," said Robert Drescher, president and chief executive officer of Optivo Corp. "Each of our advisors provides a wealth of knowledge for Optivo to draw from as we make our innovative e-business applications available."

Advisory board member and well-known MIT e-business authority Dr. Erik Brynjolfsson said, "Optivo is pointing the way for e-retailers to market with a precision that is impossible offline. I have extensively researched online customer buying behaviors, pricing and e-commerce efficiency, and successful e-retailers of the future will be those who share Optivo's vision."

To date, Optivo's Advisory Board consists of the following members:

-- Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson, the co-director of the Center for E-Business@MIT,
professor at the MIT Sloan School, an award-winning researcher and a director
or advisor for numerous e-commerce firms. Dr. Brynjolfsson lectures and
consults worldwide on topics related to Internet strategy, pricing models and
intangible assets. He is an associate member of MIT's Lab for Computer Science,
a member of Time Magazine's Board of Economists and co-editor of Understanding
the Digital Economy (MIT Press). He holds Bachelor's and Master's degrees from
Harvard University and a Ph.D. from MIT.

-- Michael Farello, senior vice president of Marketing and Merchandising
Services at Escalate, a software company providing a hosted enterprise
application suite for online selling. Farello manages corporate communications,
field marketing and product marketing. Prior to joining Escalate, Farello was a
partner at McKinsey & Company. At McKinsey, Farello led McKinsey's North
American e-tailing initiative providing a common point of view across retail,
electronic commerce, and digital marketing. Farello holds an M.B.A. with
distinction from Harvard Business School and a B.S. with distinction in
industrial engineering from Stanford University.

-- Dr. Kirthi Kalyanam, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of
SpinCircuit Inc., a leading provider of collaborative commerce solutions for
the electronics supply chain. Dr. Kalyanam is currently on academic leave from
Santa Clara University where he was an associate professor in the Department of
Marketing and founder of the E-Commerce Initiative. Dr. Kalyanam has consulted
internationally on e-commerce, channel marketing and retailing and has served
on the Internet Retail Advisory Council of the National Retail Federation. His
research has received wide media attention and has been published as lead
articles in academic journals such as Marketing Science, The Journal of
Marketing Research, Marketing Letters and The Journal of Interactive Marketing.


-- Ralph Kimball, a leading authority on data warehousing. Kimball writes the
Data Webhouse monthly column in Intelligent Enterprise magazine and is the
author of the best selling book on data warehousing, The Data Warehousing
Toolkit (John Wiley & Sons, 1996). He also has written The Data Warehouse
Lifecycle Toolkit (1998), co-authored with Ross, Reeves and Thornthwaite, and
The Data Webhouse Toolkit (2000). He teaches data warehouse design technique
through his data warehouse training company, Kimball University. Kimball
received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1973.

About Optivo Corp.

Optivo is a leading provider of innovative e-business applications that drive profitability by relating web site activity to financial performance in real-time. Optivo offers a platform for dynamic analysis and action that enables online businesses to optimally respond to changing market conditions and continuously improve key business metrics. Optivo Corp. is backed by top-tier investors, including Norwest Venture Partners. For more information, please visit www.optivo.com.