On The Market:

Icarian/Business Objects Deliver Icarian Extract Reporting

Icarian Inc, a premier provider of innovative Web-based workforce management and staffing solutions, announced it has signed a new application provider agreement with Business Objects to deliver Icarian Extract Reporting, a new Human Resource (HR) application that encompasses business intelligence capabilities. The new application is the first of three that will be offered to enable staffing and HR professionals to make strategic staffing and business decisions via ad hoc reporting and advanced analytics.

"We are pleased to work with technology companies like Icarian to deliver business intelligence capabilities for their HR applications," said Bill Robinson, vice president of North American sales for Business Objects. "Business Objects will enhance what Icarian's customers have been able to do in streamlining their recruiting and staffing process company wide. Users can quickly and easily create and analyze reports to make better hiring and overall business decisions."

Icarian has selected Business Objects to extend the overall reporting capabilities of its Icarian Workforce Solution Suite. Icarian Extract Reporting will be available this month and is the first of three advanced analytic applications to be delivered as part of Icarian's Workforce Solution Suite. Icarian Extract Reporting will offer business professionals in HR the ability to access, analyze, and share critical staffing and recruiting information.

The two additional applications will offer a complete reporting solution for Icarian's customers and will include Icarian Ad-Hoc Reporting, and Icarian Analytic Reporting. These products are slated to be available in 2002 and aim to provide customers with full reporting functionality by providing greater flexibility to staffing, HR, and business professionals.

Business Objects is a long-time customer of Icarian, and beta-tested Icarian Extract Reporting. Business Objects also was actively a part of the design and development process for Icarian Extract Reporting. Business Objects plans to continue to provide Icarian with input on the design of the two upcoming reporting applications through the Icarian design partner program in which many customers participate.

"We view Business Objects as a clear leader in the enterprise business intelligence market," stated Ed Koepfler, Icarian's CEO & president. "By providing advanced ad hoc and analytic reporting to our current standard report set, Icarian products will surpass all others in ensuring that HR professionals have the full range of choices they've been asking for to meet reporting and business needs. Nothing else comes close to this breadth of functionality."

"As a longtime customer of Icarian, we are happy to see the relationship expand to include an application provider agreement," said Sondi Goldstone, Director of Staffing for Business Objects. "We have worked closely with Icarian to design additional functionality for our Workforce Acquisition application that provides our mangers with additional insight allowing them to make better hiring decisions. We look forward to continuing to work with Icarian on the design of its future solutions that will integrate Business Objects technologies."

About Icarian

Icarian Inc is a premier provider of Workforce Management solutions that automate and streamline the entire workforce lifecycle, enabling organizations to plan, acquire, deploy and develop their people with ease. The Icarian Workforce Solution Suite leverages the power of the Internet to align workforce plans with business imperatives, dramatically improving hiring costs and productivity. A powerful combination of best-of-breed hosted Web applications and support services, the Suite helps HR, staffing and recruiting experts service their groups more efficiently while providing a superior return on investment. For more information, please visit the Icarian Web site at www.icarian.com.

About Business Objects

Business Objects is a leading provider of business intelligence (BI) solutions. Business intelligence lets organizations access, analyze, and share information internally with employees and externally with customers, suppliers, and partners. It helps organizations improve operational efficiency, build profitable customer relationships, and develop differentiated product offerings.

The company's products include BusinessObjects 2000, the industry's leading integrated business intelligence toolset and platform; and BusinessObjects Analytics, an integrated suite of enterprise analytic applications.

Business Objects pioneered the modern BI industry in 1990 by inventing a patented "semantic layer" that insulates users from the complexity of databases. In 1995, the company was first to focus on enterprise-scale BI deployments and today supports customers with more than 20,000 users. The company moved aggressively to the internet in 1997 by pioneering the market for BI extranets, a market that it continues to lead today. In 2000, the company delivered the industry's first interactive mobile BI solution. Today, Business Objects continues to innovate, creating and delivering a unique vision for enterprise analytic applications.

Business Objects has more than 13,500 customers in over 170 countries. Business Objects can be reached at 408-953-6000 and www.businessobjects.com.

Contact Icarian Inc, Marie Jackson, 408-878-6085, mjackson@icarian.com.

XO Communications Deploys Microsoft SQL Server 2000

XO Communications Inc, one of the world's fastest growing providers of broadband communications services, announced an expansion of its managed application capabilities that will run on Microsoft SQL Server 2000 software and the Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system.

The deployment of XO SQL Server provides XO managed hosting customers with enhanced data management and analysis agility, enabling those customers to turn raw data into business intelligence for Web applications such as e-commerce, customer relationship management, financial and data warehousing and enterprise resource management.

The XO SQL Server offerings are the latest in a series of managed server platforms that XO has introduced with the Windows 2000 operating system. The XO SQL Server offerings provide turnkey solutions designed to give customers the full power of Microsoft SQL Server 2000 software quickly and efficiently.

The XO SQL Server offerings are pre-configured to provide optimized database performance in a hosted environment, while dramatically reducing the time required to implement Web-based applications.

The XO SQL Server offerings support advanced natural language data query and includes core support for Extensible Markup Language (XML), which simplifies back-end system integration by enabling data extraction and management across heterogeneous computing environments.

In addition, the XO SQL Server solutions offer graphical administration, robust analysis capability and a pre-configured solution for attached storage. Outsourcing the hosting component to XO enables companies to cost-effectively develop and deploy enterprise-class business applications in record time.

"Companies are seeking improved data management and analysis resources to derive more competitive advantages in this fast-changing environment," said Nancy Gofus, executive vice president of Marketing and Customer Care for XO Communications. "Our XO SQL Server offerings reduce the time and resource needed to implement a comparable in-house solution, while offering a lower total cost of ownership. This solution also addresses the challenge of not only accumulating data, but effectively accessing it to draw out key data insights for informed decision making."

XO SQL Server Options

The XO SQL Server offerings are available in Single Server or Clustered Server options. The XO SQL Single Server configuration offers a turnkey solution for customers that need both the hardware and software components.

This pre-configured solution set utilizes Microsoft's SQL Server 2000 Standard Edition Software, and allows companies to outsource the procurement, set-up and management of their SQL server platform.

The XO SQL Clustered Server option offers a complete "fail-over" solution for customers requiring a higher level of availability and resiliency. The architecture design includes a duplicate server that acts in an "active-passive" capacity within the server cluster.

This approach ensures that the second server can provide continued, uninterrupted service should the primary server fall offline or require upgrade attention. The clustered offering also includes attached storage that allows both the primary and duplicate servers to access the attached storage area network (SAN).

This configuration allows both servers to share storage without impacting system performance on the primary communication network. The SAN component is offered in a non-redundant and redundant storage configuration. The non-redundant option uses a single hub/switch and a single fiber connection to the SAN device.

The redundant configuration offers complete redundancy of all equipment, including dual fiber connections, a secondary hub/switch along with a secondary raid controller.

"Incorporating storage with the XO SQL Cluster Server offering is a key point of differentiation for XO," said Barbara Branaman, Director of Managed Hosting Solutions for XO. Managed storage is the perfect compliment to the database and analysis capabilities of the SQL solution. Using a modular design approach, XO has actively integrated a storage component into this pre-tuned solution to provide added value while continuing to maximize the performance levels of the XO SQL Server solution."

"Now businesses have even more options for deploying enterprise-class data management and analysis solutions built on SQL Server 2000," said Jeff Ressler, Lead Product Manager for the Microsoft SQL Server family of products. "XO is delivering value to their customers by optimizing their hosting structure to take full advantage of SQL Server 2000's scalability, availability and connectivity options."

XO offers other related managed hosting products and services based on Windows 2000, including production level database administration services, individual and load balanced managed servers, as well as firewall services.

In the United States, XO hosting services are deployed and managed from five XO data centers located in Irvine, San Jose, Chicago, Secaucus, New Jersey and Fremont, California. All XO data centers are connected to the Company's broadband network backbone, which provides for faster content delivery (low latency) and increased reliability (high throughput) of customer traffic.

XO is a facilities-based, Tier One service provider with over 10Gbps of provisioned capacity to over 200 public and private peering partners. For a "virtual tour" of an XO data center, please visit: www.xo.com/datacenter.

About XO Communications

XO Communications is one of the world's leading providers of broadband communications services offering a complete set of communications services, including: local and long distance voice, Internet access, Virtual Private Networking (VPN), Ethernet, Wavelength, Hosting and Integrated voice and data services.

XO has assembled an unrivaled set of facilities-based broadband networks and Tier One Internet peering relationships in the United States. XO currently offers facilities-based broadband communications services in 62 markets throughout the United States.

The Company is also one of North America's largest holders of fixed broadband wireless spectrum, with licenses covering 95 percent of the population of the 30 largest U.S. cities.

Contact XO Communications, Jenna Dee, 408-817-2297, jenna.dee@xo.com.