Autonomy Moves into Scandinavia

May 4, 1999 - Autonomy stepped up its international expansion with the acquisition of a 33% stake in its Scandinavian distribution partner, Intracon. The acquisition signals the launch of Autonomy Nordic with head offices in Oslo, covering all Scandinavian territories as well as Poland and the Baltic States.

The management team at Autonomy Nordic comprises some key players in the Scandinavian IT market. Hans Christian Qvist assumes the role of Chairman of the Board, he is currently the President and Chief Executive Officer of Tandberg Data ASA, a leading global supplier of advanced, tape-based data storage products for the professional market. He has previously worked at top companies including Shell International, Comma Data Service AS and more recently as the director of IBM Global Services in Norway.

Autonomy Nordic's Managing Director, Dag Ronsen, brings with him a wealth of experience, as he was previously employed by Commodore, Borland and Microsoftware. Finn-Arvid Johansen is Technical Director. His experience comes from 10 years in hi-tech companies including PC Computing plc, Batavia AS, and Win.HLP.

Jan Holm joins as Marketing Director, with recent experience from Telenor, the Norwegian Trade Council and Fortuna Publishing.

Matthew Lobo, Director of Operations at Autonomy, becomes a non-executive director of Autonomy Nordic. Atle Almas will join Autonomy Nordic as a non-executive director representing TGI, a 46% shareholder in Autonomy Nordic and a private investor with significant interests across Scandinavia and Poland.

Mike Lynch, Managing Director and CEO of Autonomy commented on the acquisition: "This is a significant investment into a market that shows enormous potential. Not only does Scandinavia have the highest Internet penetration of any country, but there also exists one of the most advanced IT infrastructures in the world.

The management team we have been able to put together is excellent. Hans Christian Qvist brings a wealth of experience growing technology and IT services businesses. Dag Ronsen is a high-profile figure in the Scandinavian IT industry having recently been a key member of the team which bought Microsoft, Hewlett Packard and Creative to the Scandinavian market."

Following the widespread acceptance of Autonomy's Knowledge Management and New Media products across North America and continental Europe, the establishment of Autonomy Nordic presents the opportunity to enter a new market which is the seventh largest in the world.

Hans Christian Qvist, Chairman of Autonomy Nordic, said: "Autonomy has proved that it has world-class technology. We believe that we have the opportunity to establish Autonomy Nordic as the leader in the Scandinavian territory and our early successes are extremely encouraging."

Autonomy Nordic has recently won a number of high-profile new customers. A key New Media win is Locus Medicus (NMP), an Internet portal for the Swedish medical community which allows professional people to be updated on all the available medical information from the Web as well as from research laboratories and pharmaceutical companies.

In the Knowledge Management market, Teleplan, the largest telecommunications consultancy in Scandinavia with a turnover of NOK 550 million, has purchased Autonomy technology to establish a Knowledge Centre to provide employees with real-time intelligence about the telecommunications market worldwide.

Another client is Packard Bell, which has used Autonomy technology to automatically help employees gain access to new contracts signed both within and outside the company.

Current projects include formalising a partner network which spans all Scandinavian countries. Autonomy Nordic has, to date, signed up five partners including: Merkantildata in all Nordic territories, Information Highway, 25 Timmar AB, Inventa Affersutveckling AB and Advanced Client Server Solutions in Sweden, as well as TM Software in Iceland. Autonomy Nordic, through its local presence, has the potential to gain a large market share in an area which has no established competition from other companies.

About Autonomy

Autonomy (www.autonomy.com) develops software that automatically organizes large, unstructured volumes of information into personally relevant communications to help corporate Intranets and commercial websites serve the changing needs and interests of users. Autonomy's products for knowledge management and new media publishing save time, labour and money by automatically and precisely categorising, linking, personalising and searching large volumes of information.

The intelligent pattern recognition technology that fuels Autonomy's software was originally developed by Autonomy's sister company, Neurodynamics, for use in intelligence and defence applications. That technology is at the heart of the British police force's Holmes2 system, named after Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's legendary detective. The Holmes2 system helps the police solve crimes by matching fingerprints or by finding similarities and connections in disparate crime witness statements or police reports. The same technology is now being used to find connections in commercial data.

Autonomy was founded in 1996 and has offices in San Francisco, Boston, New York, Washington, D.C. and Cambridge, England. Autonomy customers include News Corp., Macmillan Publishing, Associated Press, Barclays Bank, Shell International, Semi-Tech, The Royal Mail and Unilever. On July 10, 1998, the company went public on the EASDAQ exchange, achieving a valuation of $165 million and raising $35 million dollars. The company's current valuation is $350 million.

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