Investment Fuels Inktomi's Network Cache Market Development Efforts

Berkeley, Calif. - April 14, 1997 - Inktomi Corporation, the network infrastructure software company, today announced that Oak Investment Partners invested $8.0 million in the company, which represents one of the largest investments made to date by Oak in a technology company. As part of the investment, Oak General Partner, Fred Harman, will join the Inktomi Board of Directors, adding background and experience to help the company fulfill the new market opportunity that network caching represents.

"Inktomi's network cache solution is a breakthrough in networking infrastructure - eliminating redundant network traffic cost-effectively," said Fred Harman, Oak Investment partner. "We see the Inktomi software architecture and its application to network data traffic infrastructure as an advance similar in importance to the introduction of router technology. We wanted a vested interest in their emerging success."

Harman also believes that Inktomi's solution will have dramatic impact on network bandwidth constraints resulting from ever increasing demands of Internet and Intranet usage.

Oak invests in companies that can become leaders in a high-growth market as a result of a proprietary core technology, product or service that will create a defensible barrier to entry over multiple product cycles.

The firm believes Inktomi's core competencies in clustering and data flow architectures - proven technologies in the company's search engine applications - will drive an emerging class of network cache applications for large enterprises, Internet Service Providers, telecommunications companies and infrastructure providers. Oak also sees significant market opportunity in the expansion of Inktomi's search business. Current search engine partners currently include Wired Ventures in the United States, Nippon Telegraph and Telephone in Japan, and OzEmail in Australia.

As the first venture capital involvement in Inktomi, Oak's funding and new board of directors participation will be focused on advancing Inktomi's leadership in the emerging network cache market, and its mission to alleviate network overload and enhance access to global information.

About Oak Investment Partners
Since its founding in 1978, Oak (www.oakinv.com) has organized seven venture partnerships with over $1.0 Billion of capital under management. Oak primarily focuses on investing in networking and software enterprises. Examples of past investments include Compaq, Seagate, Sybase, Wellfleet, Stratus, Network Equipment Technologies and Parametric Technology.

About Inktomi Corporation
Inktomi develops and markets high-performance networked information and infrastructure applications. These systems use parallel-processing technology across clusters of workstations to deliver the speed and performance characteristic of supercomputers, while utilizing smaller, less expensive workstations.

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