VA Research Assembles World Class Executive Team to Bring Linux-based Solutions to Businesses Worldwide

VA Brings Unique Offering of End-to-End Linux Hardware, Software, Service and Support Solutions For Mission Critical Enterprise Applications; Linux Running on VA Hardware Wins PC Week Labs Award

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., February 2, 1999-- VA Research, Inc. (VA), the leading provider of Linux-based hardware, software, service and support solutions, today announced the expansion of its executive management team and formation of its board of directors to drive the company's vision of bringing Linux-based systems to businesses worldwide. In addition, the company today announced that PC Week Labs awarded a prestigious "Analyst's Choice" designation to the newly released version of Linux 2.2 running on VA's multiprocessor servers.

VA's world class management team and board has been assembled from many leading computer companies including Apple (AAPL), Ascent Logic, Cisco (CSCO), Network Appliance (NTAP), Oracle (ORCL), Philips Computer Electronics and Sun Microsystems (SUNW). The board includes Eric Raymond, a respected member of the Linux technical community and author of the open source paper, The Cathedral and the Bazaar," who is credited with influencing Netscape to release its browser source code and fueling the open source movement.

"VA's future looks exceptionally bright," said Doug Leone, senior partner at Sequoia Capital and an early investor in the company. "VA has been profitable since its inception and its success has been based on sales, service and support. Combined with a strong and experienced management team and board of directors, VA has the vision and strategy necessary to remain the leading provider of Linux-based systems for businesses worldwide."

Founded in 1993, VA has become a major player in the emerging Linux market, and is poised for greater success as the market for workstations running the Linux operating system continues to grow at a rapid rate. According to a recent International Data Corporation study, shipments of the Linux operating system surged by 212 percent in 1998, a growth rate that outpaced Windows NT, NetWare, Unix, and all others in the server market. In the past year, the market share for Linux jumped from 6.8 percent to an estimated 17.2 percent of server operating system shipments, while the number of copies of Linux shipped to customers more than tripled from 1997 to 1998. VA's expertise in designing custom Linux solutions will allow the company to capture part of the fast growing segment of the estimated $17 billion enterprise and engineering workstation market.

"Linux is quickly developing into a strategic platform for corporate customers because it provides the manageability, scalability and reliability needed to run mission critical applications in the enterprise," said Larry Augustin, president and CEO of VA. "Today's Linux phenomenon mirrors the nascent days of the Internet, when early adopters brought Internet technology into major corporations and a grassroots movement proliferated. Corporations began reaping the benefits and return on investment, and Internet technology was rapidly adopted worldwide. By providing customers with full service Linux solutions, VA is positioned at the forefront of the Linux revolution and we expect the market to explode in the same way as the Internet has."

VA's Executive Management Team

Larry Augustin, president, CEO and co-founder -- Augustin founded VA in 1993 while an electrical engineering graduate student at Stanford. While at Stanford, Augustin collaborated with Dave Filo and Jerry Yang on several business plans in the early days of the Internet, before the two entrepreneurs launched Yahoo (YHOO). Augustin was also an early champion of the Linux operating system and remains a strong supporter of the open source philosophy.

Gregg Zehr, vice president of engineering -- Zehr, a senior executive with more then 20 years experience in managing engineering projects and building development teams, was vice president of engineering at Apple Computer for nine years. Zehr is credited with restructuring the PowerBook development team and rearchitecting the technology into what has become a very successful product line. He founded Ridge Technologies, and later sold it to Adaptec.

Leonard Zubkoff, chief technical officer -- Zubkoff was principal member of the technical staff at Oracle Corporation where by day he built instruction level performance monitoring and analysis tools, and by night was a Linux kernel developer. Prior to joining Oracle, Zubkoff was a principal scientist at Lucid where he designed and implemented the ports of Lucid Common Lisp to the Apollo PRISM and IBM POWER architectures, and also enhanced the Lucid C Compiler.

Greg Chabrier, vice president of sales -- Chabrier has been in computer sales since 1976, when he started with Texas Instruments. Chabrier was Sun Microsystems' first sales manager and wrote the first sales commission plan for Sun CEO Scott McNealy. Most recently, he was vice president of sales at Selectica and Calico Technology.

John Anderson, chief financial officer -- Anderson has more then 20 years of experience as a chief financial officer for firms such as Ascent Logic, Pragmatech, Force Computers, Mercury Computer Systems, Scan-Optics and Centronics. He has been closely involved in several initial public offerings, including Scan-Optics and Centronics.

Daniel Shore, vice president of operations -- Shore comes to VA from Philips Consumer Electronics, where he was the director of operations responsible for purchasing, manufacturing, quality assurance, and customer service for several product lines, including Philip's Web TV. Prior to Philips, Shore worked for Elo TouchSystems, where he was general manager and responsible for developing international markets.

Chris DiBona, director of marketing -- DiBona has been using Linux since 1995 and is active in the Linux community, serving as Web master for Linux International and the LI Grant Development Fund coordinator. He also is vice president of the Silicon Valley Linux Users Group (SVLUG).

VA's Board of Directors

Eric Raymond -- Raymond, the creator of Fetchmail and numerous other open source packages, has become one of the most vocal proponents of open source development. Eric spent three years analyzing the Linux community before writing The Cathedral and the Bazaar, the paper that has become a manifesto for open source development. He is also credited with providing the impetus for Netscape to openly publish its browser source code.

Doug Leone, senior partner, Sequoia Capital -- Leone focuses on investments in the software, hardware and communications sectors. Before joining Sequoia Capital, a major investor in VA, in 1988, he held sales and management positions at Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard and Prime Computer.

Carl Redfield, senior vice president of manufacturing, Cisco Systems -- Redfield is senior vice president of manufacturing at Cisco Systems. Prior to joining Cisco, he spent 18 years with Digital Equipment Corporation, where he was senior director of manufacturing and logistics for the personal computer division.

Jeff Allen, vice president of finance and operations and CFO, Network Appliance Prior to joining Network Appliance, Allen was senior vice president of operations at Bay Networks. From 1990 to 1995 he held positions as controller for SynOptics Communications and as vice president and controller for Bay Networks.

Linux Running on VA Hardware Wins PC Week Award

VA workstations offer enterprise customers five times the price performance advantage over Sun Microsystems workstations; the application richness of the Unix market; well documented scalability, reliability and time-to-market over Windows NT; interoperability with Intel/Windows environments; and the critical freedom to develop custom OS improvements.

According to recent PC Week Labs benchmark tests conducted on VA's four processor workstation, the newly released Linux 2.2 kernel ran I/O operations on multiple processors and demonstrated the power and flexibility required by major enterprises. The tests revealed Linux has proven reliability, flexibility and an attractive price, giving corporate customers concerned with Windows 2000 delays a reason to evaluate the Linux platform for running enterprise wide applications. In addition, PC Week Labs awarded Linux 2.2 running on VA servers the prestigious "Analyst's Choice" designation. For more information on these benchmark tests or the Analyst Choice award, see http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153,387766,00.html.

About VA Research, Inc.

VA Research, Inc. is the leading provider of Linux-based hardware, software, service and support. The first and fastest growing Linux systems company in the world, VA is a pioneer in providing high performance workstations and servers to enterprises and is at the forefront of the open source revolution. Based in Mountain View, Calif., the privately held company has been profitable since its formation in 1993 and has gained a reputation for innovation and responsiveness that is making it a leader in full service Linux solutions. For more information contact VA at Http://www.valinux.com, (888) LINUX-4U or by sending email to sales@varesearch.com.