Sybase and Digital Form Interactive Media Alliance

INDUSTRY PIONEERS WILL COMBINE HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE TO SPEED DELIVERY OF
ITV SERVICES

EMERYVILLE, CA, June 19, 1995 -- Sybase, Inc. and Digital Equipment
Corporation today announced that they will integrate the SYBASE Intermedia
and Digital Mediaplex product lines to create a complete hardware/software
architecture for authoring, delivering, and managing interactive
television (ITV) services. The two companies have forged a non-exclusive
agreement to immediately dedicate the necessary engineering and management
resources to deliver this new ITV platform in early 1996. They also intend
to collaborate on a new generation of standalone, low-cost multimedia
production systems aimed at ITV development environments.

"Sybase and Digital make an outstanding combination," said Sultan Zia, vice
president of Video and Interactive Information Services, Digital Equipment
Corporation. Our alliance is well-positioned to deliver a triple play on
features, price, and availability and significantly reduce the amount of
time it takes to get ITV services to market. The integration of our
product architectures will propel the industry by helping developers,
managers, and executives gain far greater technical, creative, and
financial control over their ITV projects."

"Our two companies bring to the table a great deal of experience in what it
takes to actually build, deploy, and operate an ITV system," said Russell
Werner, vice president and general manager, New Media Division, Sybase,
Inc. "From server to subscriber, in small or large deployments, we can
anticipate the hardware and software needs of our customers and provide
the optimal solution for all phases of the ITV life cycle. The excellent
synergy between our two product lines promises to deliver compelling
economic benefits to all the players in the ITV value chain, including
access providers, service providers, and content providers."

ITV LEADERSHIP

Both Sybase and Digital have demonstrated leadership in ITV trials and
commercial deployments throughout the world. SYBASE Intermedia software
products and consulting services are being utilized by Singapore Telecom,
BellSouth, ICTV a supplier of Cox Cable Communications Inc. , and Southern
New England Telephone (SNET) in their announced ITV trials, providing
services including, video-on-demand, distance learning, and home
shopping.

SYBASE Intermedia products are backed by an integrated client/server
architecture addressing business-critical operations such as transaction
processing, replication, interoperability, and data warehousing essential
to ITV operations, business, and subscriber management systems. Cable
industry leaders Tele-communications Inc. and Time Warner Communications
have both selected Sybase's client/server software architecture to build
and integrate their next-generation cable business systems for billing,
pricing, subscriber management, and customer support.

Digital is the market leader in interactive television, supplying media
server solutions for more trials and deployments than any other vendor.
Announced wins at cable television companies include Westminster Cable in
London and Svenska Kabel-TV in Sweden, which currently has the most homes
and schools actively using a Video-on-Demand system. Telecommunications
companies choosing Digital include U S WEST for their trial in Nebraska,
Belgacom for their trial in Belgium, and NYNEX and Ameritech for their
deployments in the Northeast and Midwest. Digitals servers are also being
used in production environments to insert advertising on more than 1000
channels across 56 cable TV headends served by Adlink in California, and
to deliver pay-TV and near Video-on-Demand services by TMN Networks, Inc.
in Canada.

INTEGRATED ARCHITECTURE

The SYBASE Intermedia architecture consists of three integrated software
products: Intermedia Server, Gain Interplay, and Gain Momentum. Based on
mature, proven Sybase technologies, these products combine
state-of-the-art client capabilities in ITV authoring and set-top box
delivery with a powerful database infrastructure for managing users,
application services, and media content.

Digitals Mediaplex architecture, including the hardware platform,
middleware, and video client, provides a powerful, open foundation for
delivering interactive video applications over many types of networks.
Digitals platform features object-oriented middleware that links
AlphaServer systems with the companys StorageWorks disk arrays, digital
tape library systems, and specialized network gateways.

The combination of SYBASE Intermedia and Digitals Mediaplex architectures
offer ITV operators a real opportunity to decrease time-to-market for
consumer applications.

DEVELOPER'S PLATFORM

To reduce the overhead associated with developing ITV applications, Sybase
and Digital intend to jointly develop a low cost, fully integrated content
platform solution for deployment in digital media production studios. This
content development solution will combine the Sybase authoring software
with the capabilities of Digitals current Mediaplex development system to
streamline authoring tasks, such as integrating media content with
navigator logic, test service functions off line, and compile and encode
applications for target set-top box deployment.

DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION

Digital Equipment Corporation is a worldwide leader in open client/server
solutions from personal computing to integrated worldwide information
systems.Digital's scalable Alpha platforms, storage, networking, software,
and services, together with industry focused solutions from business
partners, help organizations compete and win in today's global
marketplace.

SYBASE, INC.

Sybase, Inc., is a worldwide leader in client/server software. Sybase
develops database, middleware, and tools products for four major
client/server market segments: new media, online transaction processing,
data warehousing, and mass deployment. The company's mission is to provide
its customers with an open, adaptable information systems architecture
that enables rapid business change. Headquartered in Emeryville, CA,
Sybase is the seventh largest independent software company in the world.

Sybase Inc
6475 Christie Ave
Emeryville, CA 04608
510-596-3500;  Fax: 510-658-9441
 
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