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April 11, 2000

 

INPRISE/BORLAND AND HITACHI STRENGTHEN CO-DEVELOPMENT RELATIONSHIP WITH AMENDMENTS TO TEN-YEAR LICENSING AGREEMENT
Inprise/Borland's VisiBroker and Java Development Technologies Key to Hitachi's Enterprise Products Strategy
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Scotts Valley, California - April 11, 2000 -- Inprise/Borland Corporation (Nasdaq: INPR) and Hitachi, Ltd (TSE: 6501, NYSE: HIT), one of the world's leading vendors of reliable enterprise software systems, today announced that they have signed a worldwide amendment to an existing licensing agreement for CORBA and Java Development Technology.

Under the terms of the new agreement, the research and development laboratories of the two organizations will each begin to share their own innovations to Inprise/Borland's VisiBrokerO product line, including source code for functional innovation, technical enhancement and quality improvement.

Amendments to the current agreements extend the relationship between the two companies, reaching back to1995, for co-developing CORBA-based products and will broaden the commitment of the two organisations to share Enterprise middleware technical innovations.

As provided in a previous agreement, Hitachi will continue to license Inprise/Borland's VisiBroker CORBA object request broker (ORB) and Inprise's Java development technology for inclusion in Hitachi's CORBA technology products, such as TPBrokerO product suite and the Cosminexus Application Server*. [*Cosminexus Application Server is currently marketed only in Japan.]

Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed. Inprise/Borland and Hitachi also continue to discuss further co-development and joint marketing activities.

Shoji Yamamoto, Executive General Manager, Software Division, Hitachi, Ltd. said, "This enhancement of the agreement strengthens our product and service offering significantly, especially to our mission critical system customers, sharing innovations between Inprise/Borland and Hitachi. We are very confident that the combination of Inprise/Borland's VisiBroker and Hitachi's reliable software products will continue to be the best solution for enterprise customer."

"This agreement is exciting because it is an example of yet another major technology company looking to Inprise/Borland to provide the basis for their technologies," said Dale Fuller, interim president and CEO of Inprise/Borland. "It sends a further message to the market that Inprise/Borland is a leader in providing cutting edge technologies to the middleware market."

Gari Grimm, Senior Vice President, Hitachi Computer Products (America), Inc. welcomed the closer working ties with a major innovative middleware vendor. "CORBA based solutions are already widely used in mission critical e-business systems including telecom and financial markets. This agreement will improve our supporting capability significantly to our customers using CORBA based e-business solutions."


About Hitachi TPBroker®
The production-proven, reliable CORBA object transaction service product TPBroker® includes VisiBroker as its base ORB -- enhanced with key functionality required in mission-critical applications for enterprise solutions including asynchronous messaging, security services and application management capability. Hitachi continues to design and enhance its CORBA product and service menu as the TPBroker® product family, providing a better solution for developing robust, highly scalable, highly reliable and secure mission-critical enterprise systems. TPBroker® suite is marketed by Software Solutions Division of Hitachi Computer Products(America), Inc., a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd. For more information on TPBroker®, please visit http://www.hitachisoftware.com or call the sales office in USA at (888) 569 3803. TPBroker is a registered trademark of Hitachi Computer Products (America), Inc. in the United States.

Inprise/Borland VisiBroker -- A Leading Deployed ORB Technology Inprise/Borland's VisiBroker for Java and VisiBroker for C++ CORBA object request brokers are designed to facilitate the development and deployment of distributed enterprise applications that are scalable, flexible, and easily maintained. Industry affiliations with Hitachi, Oracle, Novell, Netscape and others have played a key role in making VisiBroker a leading deployed and adopted ORB in the computer industry.


About Hitachi, Ltd.
Hitachi, Ltd., headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the world's leading global electronics companies, with fiscal 1998 (ended March 31, 1999) consolidated sales of 7,977 billion yen ($65.9 billion*). The company manufactures and markets a wide range of products, including computers, semiconductors, consumer products and power and industrial equipment. For more information on Hitachi, Ltd., please visit Hitachi's Web site at http://www.hitachi.co.jp . [*At an exchange rate of 121 yen to the dollar.]


About Inprise/Borland
Inprise/Borland is a leading provider of Internet access infrastructure and application development tools and services for all major platforms, including Linux, Solaris and Windows. In February, Inprise/Borland agreed to merge with Corel Corporation. The merger, which is subject to the approval of both parties' shareholders and regulatory approval, is expected to be completed this summer. Founded in 1983, Inprise/Borland is headquartered in the Silicon Valley, California, with operations worldwide. To learn more, visit Inprise/Borland at http://www.borland.com, the community site at http://community.borland.com or call the company at (800) 632-2864.


Note: Forward-looking statements in this release, including but not limited to those concerning Inprise's future market developments, positions in such markets, future products, product-availability dates, and the potential performance, features of or benefits to be derived from the Company's products, involve a number of uncertainties and risks, and actual events or results may differ materially. Factors that could cause actual events or results to differ materially include, among others, the following: possible disruptive effects of organizational or personnel changes in the Company, shifts in customer demand, risks associated with the planned merger with Corel, market acceptance of the Company's new or enhanced products, delays in scheduled product-availability dates, actions, or announcements by competitors, software errors, general business conditions, and market-development and growth rates in the client/server and Internet-software markets, and other factors described in the Company's SEC reports on Forms 10-K and 10-Q.




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