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Press Release

Cast Iron Systems, Inventor of the Application Router®, Announces Industry Veteran, Fred Meyer, as CEO

$8.3 million invested by Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners

Mountain View, CA, July 8, 2003 — Cast Iron Systems, formerly known as IronHide Corporation, announced the appointment of Fred Meyer as president and CEO. Mr. Meyer previously served as chief strategy officer from TIBCO. In addition, the company has received private funding totaling $8.3 million, led by Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners, which enabled Cast Iron to bring the first release of its breakthrough application integration technology to the market, and will allow its sales, marketing and development teams to expand.

Cast Iron was formed to address the vast majority of business integration problems that can be solved in the network. These call for simple business processes such as order routing or data record synchronization. These processes may be linked together to form more complex processes but at their core, they are simple. Cast Iron invented the Application Router® with these needs in mind: simple, integrated appliances that can quickly and easily automate a company's business processes. Because it has been designed specifically to solve the most common integration problems, the Cast Iron Application Router® is 50-90% less expensive to buy and maintain than solutions developed using alternative approaches. The Application Router® is inherently self-contained, allowing 'lights out' deployment and reducing administration costs to near zero. Typically, customers report that these cost and time savings result in a payback of less than three months and that implementation time is dramatically reduced.

"We saw in Cast Iron many of the same opportunities that existed when we invested in Cisco in 1987. Just as Cisco transformed the networking market with its hardware device, we believe Cast Iron's revolutionary Application Router® will change the face of the existing application integration market," said Mark Kvamme, Sequoia Capital Partner. Cast Iron's executive team is led by president and chief executive officer, Fred Meyer. Mr. Meyer brings over 16 years of leadership and industry experience to the Cast Iron team. Prior to joining Cast Iron, Mr. Meyer served as TIBCO's chief marketing officer for a number of years before becoming chief strategy officer, where he defined TIBCO's long-term vision. At TIBCO, Mr. Meyer helped to expand the company's leadership in key areas, including web services, B2B, telecommunications, financial services, transportation and logistics.

"We have assembled a unique team for an integration company, with key members from Sun, IBM, Oracle, Borland, Accenture, TIBCO, and Intel providing experience and leadership. I see the Application Router® as the next revolution for application integration. As we deliver our first product to customers, it is clear that the market opportunity is boundless," said Meyer.

Cast Iron's board of directors is comprised of top industry veterans and visionaries. Promod Haque, managing partner of Norwest Venture Partners, is chairman of the board and joins Mark Kvamme, Sequoia Capital Partner, Fred Meyer, president and CEO, Nikhyl Singhal, EVP of products and founder, and George Scott, CTO and founder.

About Cast Iron Systems

Cast Iron Systems, formerly known as IronHide Corporation, is the inventor of the Application Router®, and is working with a premier group of customers and investors to build a revolutionary solution to application integration. Cast Iron's unique products enable enterprises to drastically reduce their integration costs by offering a simple yet scalable device. Based in Mountain View, California, Cast Iron was founded in 2001 and consists of a world class team committed to solving the costly and complex IT application integration challenges facing today's Fortune 500 organizations.