Parlano and Communicator Introduce MindAlign on Connex for the Financial Services Industry

Business Wire, June 8, 2004

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 8, 2004

- Industry Leaders Deliver a New Managed Service

Offering for Collaborative Messaging -

Today at the Securities Industry Association Technology Management Conference, Parlano, Inc., a leading provider of collaborative messaging applications and Communicator Inc, a leading provider of collaboration and content networks for the financial industry, introduce a powerful new managed service offering for the financial services industry. A joint offering from Parlano and Communicator, MindAlign on Connex is a new managed service offering enabling businesses of all sizes to utilize sophisticated group collaborative messaging services without incurring the technology or personnel infrastructure investments required to deploy an advanced enterprise system. Parlano delivers its proven collaborative messaging framework in MindAlign while Communicator delivers the managed services via its Connex Network(SM), with identity management and community controls, mission-critical system provisioning and security.

"Markets built and managed on time, efficiency and execution demand a level of interconnectedness that only network-based services can deliver. The success of collaboration will be driven by the openness and interconnectivity of key trading networks," stated Genelle Hung, Market Analyst, The Radicati Group, Inc. "Throughout the banking and trading network as well as individual vertical and geographic markets, extending the power of group collaboration well beyond standard instant messaging platforms and delivering a comprehensive and persistent person-to-person and group-to-group collaboration service is critical to success."

This partnership brings two market leading solutions together as a managed service for global financial institutions. MindAlign on Connex is a new collaborative messaging offering designed for organizations with large numbers of end-users and those sponsoring key third-parties with whom they wish to individually and securely communicate. MindAlign on Connex delivers a secure and restricted domain accessible only to individuals enabled by the subscribing institution, creating their own private networks without the requirements of acquiring and managing enterprise-class infrastructure.

"Managed services and outsourced support for partner connectivity are critical elements in speed to market and knowledge sharing for all organizations. When applied to the financial services industry, the time-to-revenue equation becomes far more pronounced - demanding rapid connectivity, information and most importantly, persistence, to be successful," stated Nick Fera, chairman and chief executive officer for Parlano. "Our partnership with Communicator brings to market a new high-value collaborative messaging service to speed partner connectivity and time-to-revenue for global financial institutions. The market is demanding inter-company group messaging (chat), topic and group-based channels and persistence today. This is where even vertically specific instant messaging solutions break. Our collective domain expertise in collaboration is unmatched for this target market."

"Every day we see more financial industry firms requiring a cross-enterprise managed network to support the growth of their electronic communications," noted Leo Schlinkert, CEO of Communicator Inc. "Industry-wide gated communities cannot be operated within a single enterprise, they require an independent third-party. Communicator's network with thousands of financial industry firms sending millions of messages every month is a natural fit to rapidly expand the connectivity for MindAlign users. This partnership demonstrates how two leading solution providers can team up to support the needs of our customers and provide more choices with either MindAlign on Connex or Communicator Hub Connex."

Building on the experience and expertise of both organizations, MindAlign on Connex delivers key capabilities for financial institutions including:

-- Connectivity: Rapidly and cost effectively connect operations

for key individuals and external trading partners from across

both buy-side and sell-side global financial institutions. The

secure identity-based managed service offerings minimize

implementation requirements delivering the quickest possible

time-to-revenue;

-- Presence: Receive immediate visual notification of the

changing state of other service subscribers and topic and

group-specific discussion channels;

-- Persistence: Person-to-person instant messaging and topic and

group-based channel messaging persist across subscriber's

sessions - delivering real-time context each time a subscriber

connects to the service;

-- Intelligence: Integration with leading market data sources

provides additional real-time context to the discussions;

-- Information Management: Filters, alerts and permissions enable

subscribers to manage the wealth of information communicated

based not only upon higher-level topics or groups but also

upon personal variables (tickers, currencies, etc.) essential