PressRelease of May 22, 2000

Harris & Jeffries Inc. Becomes NETPLANE(tm) Systems, Inc.
Reflecting Aggressive Growth and Strategic Expansion in Control Plane Software Solutions
Opens New Subsidiary in India and Technology Support Center in Germany

May 22, 2000 - Harris & Jeffries, the leading supplier of integrated networking protocol software solutions for the control plane, today announced that the company has changed its name to NETPLANE(tm) Systems, Inc. The new name represents the company's international growth and highlights its leadership position as the main provider of comprehensive control plane solutions to meet the carrier-class needs of system designers and network architects.
Deepak Shahane, president and CEO of NETPLANE said, "Changing our name to NETPLANE signals our strategic focus on providing comprehensive solutions for the control plane. Until now, NETPLANE was focused on Frame Relay, ATM and MPLS solutions. But with NETPLANE's recent product announcements regarding carrier-class IP Routing, SS7 and GR303 protocols, we are clearly positioned as the comprehensive, tier-one supplier for next generation, multi-service equipment manufacturers. System designers will benefit from lower development costs and faster time-to-market. Our new name reflects this positioning very clearly."
With the unveiling of its new corporate identity, the company also announced the opening of a new subsidiary in Hyderabad, India and a technology support center in Ulm, Germany. The Hyderabad office marks the company's first major expansion into Asia and will employ over 30 people by the end of the year. They will primarily be augmenting NETPLANE's development resources. The Ulm office, a partnership between NETPLANE and Ikon GmbH, one of NETPLANE's leading European distributors, will offer products and turnkey service solutions to customers in Europe. A major focus will be to provide porting and integration services with customers' systems and hardware platforms.

Karl Judex, general manager of Ikon GmbH said: "Today customers often need turnkey solutions. Therefore it is often necessary to have a location not too far from the customer's site. Besides distribution of NETPLANE's products, Ikon has already successfully offered porting and integration services to European customers like Altvater Airdata, DaimlerChrysler Aerospace, Eolring and Essnet. The NETPLANE technology support center in Ulm will be able to satisfy the needs of the European customers".
NETPLANE's strategy is to better position the company to address increasing global opportunities with major networking manufacturers. At the same time, the India facility represents an expansion of engineering resources for software development.
"Our international initiatives are the first steps in an aggressive globalization plan," Shahane said.

About NETPLANE(tm) Systems Inc.

NETPLANE Systems Inc., formerly Harris & Jeffries, Inc., is a leading supplier of integrated networking protocol software and systems for the control plane. More than 200 equipment manufacturers worldwide that are developing products for the next generation Internet and other data communications and telecommunications networks employ NETPLANE's software. NETPLANE's technology expertise includes Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), ATM, Frame Relay and SS7, with a focus on carrier-class capabilities required by the service provider marketplace. NETPLANE's Label Traffic Control System (LTCS) was the industry's first available MPLS software solution. Known for its technology innovation and the superior functionality and quality of its products, NETPLANE's solutions enable customers to accelerate time-to-market, streamline the development process, lower life cycle costs and reduce development risks. The company has strategic relationships with major switch manufacturers like Nortel, Cisco Systems, Lucent Technologies, Alcatel, Fujitsu, NEC, Siemens and Ericsson to emerging next generation equipment manufacturers, such as Redback Networks, Sirocco Systems and Ennovate Networks. NETPLANE can be reached at (781) 329-3200, or at www.netplane.com.

About Ikon GmbH

Ikon GmbH is an engineering company specialised in customer specific development of high-performance network communications hardware and software for many of Germany´s largest corporate enterprises, including Alcatel SEL, DaimlerChrysler Aerospace, Dornier, Nortel Dasa and Siemens. These solutions are mainly based on NETPLANE's MPLS, ATM, Frame Relay, SS-7 and V5 protocol stacks or self developed ISDN or VoIP software modules. ikon GmbH works with all leading realtime operating systems like Nucleus+, OS-9, OSE, pSOS+ and VxWorks as well as with standard operating systems like Windows NT, LINUX or Solaris.
Ikon can be reached at +49 (731) 94661-0 or www.ikon-gmbh.de.

last update: 15.08.2008		© 2008 by ikon GmbH, Ulm