Features - Financial Plays Of The Week:

OuterBay RECEIVES ADDITIONAL $9 MILLION IN FUNDING

OuterBay, a provider of application data management software, announced an additional investment of $9 million, bringing total venture capital funding in the company to $19 million. New investor Redpoint Ventures of Menlo Park, CA. led the round with existing investors, BA Venture Partners and Leapfrog, demonstrating their continued support of OuterBay through the expansion of their initial investments.

AMR Research predicts that the enterprise applications market will reach $70 billion by 2006. As these applications are at the core of nearly every organization's daily operations, most enterprises have or will suffer from the adverse effects of application data growth. OuterBay is the only company that solves application data management problems through its focus on applicationaware solutions that improve performance and reduce IT expenditures.

"Raising this capital in a challenging economy is a strong endorsement of OuterBay's vision to solve the business problem of unmanaged application data growth," said Michael Howard, CEO of OuterBay. "With significant customer traction and revenues under our belt, we have a solid foundation that we can leverage to add strategic sales, marketing and product development efforts that target new accounts and new markets." Howard continued, "Our applicationaware solutions address data management in the context of business applications and processes. These products improve the performance, stability, and manageability of applications, and provide an ongoing "best practice" that reduces infrastructure costs."

With this announcement, Redpoint partner Allen Beasley joins the OuterBay board of directors. Beasley commented, "OuterBay delivers what few vendors can claim - solutions that solve real business problems and make existing investments in applications and application infrastructure work smarter and faster. There's a direct, rapid return on investment connection for OuterBay's products." "Redpoint's investment further validates OuterBay's vision and the management team led by industry veteran Michael Howard," said Rory O'Driscoll, managing director of BA Venture Partners. "The investment also validates that OuterBay is clearly the market leader in the application data management space."

Peter Rip, Managing Director of Leapfrog Ventures said, "The business case for OuterBay's products is compelling and their continued success in this challenging IT environment speaks volumes. Since our initial investment last year, OuterBay has continued to do what very few enterprise software companies are doing these days -- prove and increase their value by continuing to satisfy the data management needs of Global 2000 companies." Founded in 1997, the Company's initial years were "customer-funded" due to early successes with large-scale customers such as Sun and Applied Materials. The Company completed a $10 million Series A venture round in September 2001 to expand sales, marketing and product development. Initial investors included Leapfrog and BA Venture Partners.

About Redpoint Ventures

Redpoint Ventures was founded in 1999 by partners from Brentwood Venture Capital and Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), two of the top firms in the venture capital industry. The firm is focused on funding innovative companies that have the potential to define, lead, and change industries. Redpoint partners have many years of experience and success in technology investing; combined with this foundation, the firm is able to leverage a thriving network of entrepreneurs, partners, and industry experts to accelerate building market-leading companies. Redpoint, www.redpoint.com, headquartered in Menlo Park, CA. with offices in Los Angeles, has about $2 billion under management and has invested in approximately 60 companies to date.

About BA Venture Partners

BA Venture Partners, a venture capital partnership, leads start-up to expansion stage investments in networking, semiconductor, software, and biotechnology companies. BA Venture Partners closed BA Venture Partner VI, a $500 million fund in 2000. BA Venture Partners' sole limited partner is Bank of America. www.baventurepartners.com.

About Leapfrog Ventures

Leapfrog Ventures is a venture capital investment firm in Menlo Park, CA. Leapfrog Ventures specializes in early stage venture capital for information technology companies. Leapfrog invests in enterprise software, communications, and next-generation computing technologies. Prior early stage investments of Leapfrog's principals include E.piphany, Exabyte, Exodus Communications, Octel Communications, and Symantec.

About OuterBay

OuterBay's application data management solutions are a new class of application-aware infrastructure. OuterBay's software monitors and manages data growth in the application environment and takes action to maintain high service levels of performance and stability. OuterBay's products include Application Resource MonitorT, LiveArchiveT, and Instance GeneratorT. OuterBay's product suite is engineered to work with leading ERP, CRM and supply chain applications and reduces the total cost of ownership associated with enterprise application environments.

Founded in 1997, OuterBay is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices in the United States, Europe and Australia. Customers include Fortune 1000 and emerging global economy leaders in such industries as high technology, manufacturing, and financial services. For more information on OuterBay's solutions, contact OuterBay at www.outerbay.com, or 408-340-1200.