PeerDirect Announces Native Linux Support for PeerDirect Distributed Enterprise

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BEDFORD, Mass. –January 20, 2003 — PeerDirect Corporation, an operating company of Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq: PRGS), today announced that its flagship product suite, PeerDirectTM Distributed Enterprise, now provides native support for Linux. As a result, companies can cost-effectively decentralize and distribute database-driven business applications to thousands of locations across the enterprise using Linux-based application servers and databases.

The PeerDirect Distributed Enterprise suite lets companies decentralize their business applications by automatically and bi-directionally synchronizing, distributing and replicating corporate data and applications across multiple locations, desktops and mobile devices, while providing centralized tools for easy administration. By distributing applications in this way, companies can eliminate the latency and outages associated with traditional centralized application deployment, while radically improving employee productivity by ensuring that vital applications and data are always available to them, whether they are online or offline.

With native Linux support, PeerDirect Distributed Enterprise now lets companies keep deployment costs to a minimum because they can use a pure Linux infrastructure with popular open source databases and application servers.

“Running PeerDirect on Linux servers is an ideal distributed application solution for TeamShare because we can ensure that critical business information is consistently available to the people who need it most, at a cost that is substantially lower than it would be if we were using non-Linux servers for remote deployment,” said Greg Burnell, chief operating officer at TeamShare, a leader in enterprise solutions for software development and product lifecycle management. “With PeerDirect, we can take advantage of the benefits of decentralization without relinquishing control or threatening the integrity of our data. The addition of native Linux support means PeerDirect delivers a huge return on investment by enabling a true distributed application architecture across a low-cost Linux infrastructure.”

Deployed by customers in industries as diverse as retail and aircraft maintenance, PeerDirect Distributed Enterprise is based on patented technology that allows automatic bi-directional data synchronization between any combination of databases, including products from Oracle, Microsoft, Progress, IBM, Sybase and Informix, as well as the PostgreSQL open source database. This support for heterogeneous database environments means that companies can choose Linux as their remote deployment platform, even if they are running Windows or UNIX in their data centers.

“With native Linux support, PeerDirect Distributed Enterprise now eliminates both the technical and financial hurdles to deploying decentralized business applications,” said Lorne Cooper, president of PeerDirect. “Now, companies can justify mass deployments of this type of technology. Companies are able to deliver vastly improved performance, availability and functionality to distributed offices and remote workers across a low-cost Linux infrastructure.”

About PeerDirect Corporation
PeerDirect Corporation is a supplier of advanced, patented technology for distributed application deployment and management. The company’s flagship product suite, PeerDirect(TM) Distributed Enterprise, allows companies to centrally manage distributed applications with fully synchronized databases deployed across widely distributed locations. PeerDirect Distributed Enterprise accomplishes this with a core technology that replicates, distributes and synchronizes data and application components across multiple locations, giving customers more responsive and reliable applications with less dependency on network connectivity to a central data center.

Based in Bedford, Mass., with additional development operations in Toronto, Canada, PeerDirect Corporation is an operating company of Progress Software Corporation (Nasdaq: PRGS) and provides customers with a comprehensive range of enterprise technical support, consulting and training for PeerDirect products. More information on PeerDirect can be found at www.peerdirect.com, or by calling +1-781-280-4080.

About Progress Software Corporation

Founded in 1981, Progress Software Corporation, or PSC (Nasdaq: PRGS) is the parent organization for the Progress Company operating unit, Sonic Software Corporation, NuSphere Corporation and PeerDirect Corporation. PSC provides industry-leading technologies for all aspects of e-business development, deployment, integration and management. Progress Software Corporation is headquartered in Bedford, MA, and can be reached at +1-781- 280-4000 or on the Web at www.progress.com.

PeerDirect is a trademark or registered trademark of PeerDirect Corporation’s affiliate PeerDirect Company in the U.S. and Canada. Any other trademarks or service marks contained herein may be the property of their respective owners.