GemStone Systems Teams with Sun Microsystems to Provide Largest Online Bank in South Africa with Increased Network Speed and Scalability

eBucks Relies on GemStone and Sun Solutions for Superior System Performance and Customer Satisfaction

Beaverton, Ore.- May 27, 2003 — GemStone Systems today announced that eBucks.com (Pty) Ltd., a Division of FirstRand Bank, will implement an integrated technology solution with Sun Microsystems to simplify their architecture and manage data across the division’s hardware and software systems. eBucks is the leading online banking system in South Africa and provides more than 500,000 customers with a variety of services, including retail banking, vehicle and home financing, a customer appreciation program and an online shopping solution through redeemable eBucks currency. By combining the GemStone and Sun products and services, eBucks will build a system that meets the company’s major goals of performance, scalability and high availability through a much lower cost of ownership than competitive solutions.

“The integration of GemStone’s distributed caching technology with our existing infrastructure and Sun’s global strength and computing capabilities provide significant value for eBucks and our customers,” said Vincent Coetzee, chief technology officer at eBucks. “We expect to save one-third of the maintenance and associated technology costs using a combined GemStone and Sun solution verses the traditional application server and relational database configuration.”

eBucks Infrastructure: Managing High Volumes of Data in Real-Time

eBucks, the leading online banking system in South Africa, provides its customers with a variety of easy-to-use retail services. The eBucks system is a simple, safe and secure way for FirstRand customers to conduct their personal account transactions online, while earning eBucks reward points at the same time.

eBuck’s business and system goals, including high performance requirements, scalability and stability needs, system flexibility, support of open standards and the reuse of existing hardware and software infrastructure will be met through joint GemStone and Sun solutions. In recent internal benchmarks, eBucks customers are receiving a higher response time to transaction requests, and the uptime percentage of the company’s system is averaging 99.6%. The transparent failover functionality offered within GemFire Distributed provides eBucks with system protection in case of individual server or database failure or an external service provider not being available. These infrastructure capabilities allow eBucks to respond more dynamically to customer demands and with more resilience when information changes.

“When we first began working with eBucks a few years ago, their goal was to build a banking and loyalty currency portal in 100 days. Not only did the flexibility and power of GemStone’s technology allow for that goal to be met, but we also helped eBucks achieve profitability within two years, a full year ahead of schedule”, said Raj Kulkarni, chief technology officer at GemStone. “The most recent collaborative effort between GemStone and Sun will provide eBucks with the flexibility and scalability needed to support its current customer base and the explosive customer growth forecasts of 2 million users in the next two years.”

The eBucks online banking system was launched in 1999 with the goal of providing fast and reliable customer services, on a 24x7 timetable. On a monthly basis, the eBucks system processes ZAR4 billion (i.e. ~USD 400 million) worth of payments and averages one million log-ons, which has provided profitable results for FirstRand Bank. Customer activity has increased by 50% over the past 3 months through a combination of innovations, including zero subscription fees for internet banking, the ability to define a third party payment online and execute it at the same time and the ability to review all user accounts in one page view.

The eBucks system will be powered by GemStone’s GemFire, a shared-memory based solution that integrates data from multiple sources in real-time, serving that data at high speed from automatically synchronized copies near the data consumers. GemFire Distributed is the only flexible, high performance and cost- effective solution for data distribution, caching and management across the enterprise that increases organizational effectiveness by dynamically provisioning consistent data at the right place, at the right time and in the right format. eBucks has deployed the solution on Sun Fire 6800 servers because of the reliability and scalability of the Solaris platform, as well as Sun's global strength in the Financial Services market.

GemFire Distributed processes a customer transaction immediately in a highly efficient manner that improves eBucks customer response time and makes the business more cost efficient. With transparent transactions, the GemFire solution helps reduce load-balancing issues, and in turn, customers get quicker and more efficient service.

Total Cost of Ownership

The eBucks system is extremely cost effective as it leverages Java technology and it can be easily deployed on multiple hardware platforms, thus lowering the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) due to a component based hardware approach. This technology strategy, along with the use of open source software leads to a cost effective and powerful solution. While it is important that the solutions deployed are cost effective, it is vital that scalability and availability of the system are not compromised. The eBucks technology implementation minimizes cost without reducing the reliability and performance of the system.

About GemStone Systems, Inc.

GemStone Systems is a privately held company with over 20 years of software experience in developing high performance object oriented technology and highly scalable systems for enterprise organizations. GemStone’s patented technology delivers the speed, performance and capabilities that enterprises need from the hardware and software they already own. Industry leading global organizations like IntercontinentalExchange Inc., JPMorgan Chase, UBS Warburg, BellSouth Telecommunications and Orient Overseas Container Line depend on GemStone technology and expertise to build scalable, mission-critical applications that have set the standard in their industries, and given them the competitive edge to be increasingly profitable.

Headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, GemStone sells and supports its solutions through its US sales force and a worldwide network of distributors. For detailed product and company information, please visit www.gemstone.com

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GemStone, GemFire and GemFire Distributed are registered trademarks of GemStone Systems, Inc. Other names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.