Research Triangle Park, N.C. – March 31, 2003 – Bob Brauer, Robert Dale and Richard Holcomb announced today that they have created a new company called StrikeIron. The company, based in Research Triangle Park, was created to help users take advantage of Web services, an emerging technology trend. The trio plans to introduce their first product later this year.

Web services are self-contained business functions or applications that operate over the Internet. They allow businesses to integrate their internal computer systems and applications, leverage legacy technology systems, and automate communication with their business partners, suppliers and vendors as they have been unable to do in the past using disparate systems or applications. Web services are written to industry standard XML specifications to ensure that they can work together.

“Web services have the potential to drive the next great revolution in software usability. Ironically, Bob, Robert and I all recognized that and were independently working on a similar set of ideas for starting a new company to address this market,” explained Richard Holcomb, StrikeIron CEO and chairman. “It made perfect sense for us to work together on this opportunity. I have known Bob and Robert for several years, having served as both an investor and board member in their prior ventures. In the past, my successes have always been as part of a great team. I look forward to even more success at StrikeIron, with two guys who I respect and have worked with successfully before.”

Although Web services was conceived as a programmer level integration technology, StrikeIron’s initial products will allow the much larger community of business users and knowledge workers to deploy and use Web services to increase their productivity and profitability.

StrikeIron’s core technology is encapsulated in the Web Services Business Object (WSBO™) layer. WSBO allows business intelligence analysts, knowledge workers and developers to view, extract, and format data from any existing Web service. WSBO also allows users to combine multiple Web services with added business rules and logic that can then be integrated into common business applications like Microsoft Office, SAP, and PeopleSoft. In short, WSBO allows the business intelligence analyst to access the wealth of information that is made available by Web services, but previously made inaccessible to the non-programmer by the complexity of the Web services technology.

The Aurora Funds, Inc. provided seed money for the new company after recognizing the significant opportunity presented by Web services and this unique trio of serial entrepreneurs.

"We are delighted to be investors in StrikeIron. Richard Holcomb, Bob Brauer and Robert Dale were all founders or senior officers of previous Aurora portfolio companies and we had positive experiences with each of them. When they came to us as a team with their new company, we were very excited,” said Scott Albert, Aurora managing general partner. “Their business model for addressing the Web services space is unique and very reasonable."

About the Founders
Bob Brauer will take on the role of vice president of business development. Brauer was the founding chief executive officer for the DataFlux Corporation, an innovative database management software company launched in 1996, and acquired by SAS Institute in 2000. Prior to DataFlux, Brauer was a software engineer with Seer Technologies.

Robert Dale will serve as vice president of research and development. Dale is the technical strength behind StrikeIron with over 25 years of experience creating innovative enterprise software. He founded and served as CTO of KVLabs, a company that developed configuration management software for Microsoft-based networks. He also co-founded and served as CTO for CI Technologies, which was acquired by Seagate Software (later a division of Veritas) in 1995.

Richard Holcomb will lead the company as chief executive officer and chairman. Prior to founding StrikeIron, he served as the Interim CEO of GadgetSpace, and oversaw its successful acquisition by Inphonic in 2001. He was a founder of HAHT Commerce in 1995, a major e-commerce application provider, and served as HAHT's first CEO and chairman. Prior to HAHT, he was a founder of Q+E Software in 1986, a supplier of client-server database access technology, and served as that company's CEO, president, and chairman from inception to its acquisition by Intersolv in 1994.

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