Thursday August 24, 6:30 am Eastern Time

Mainsoft Reveals Details of Revolutionary E-Porting Internet Initiative

SAN JOSE, Calif., Aug. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Mainsoft, the leader in cross-platform solutions for the enterprise, today revealed details of a landmark market strategy designed to extend its industry leading role in cross platform application migration, and transform the process of application porting during the Age of the Internet. At the foundation of Mainsoft's e-porting Internet Initiative are two key tenets that promise to redefine application porting: delivering new porting technologies focused on e-business providers and Internet software companies, and leveraging the Web as a delivery platform for e-porting services. The strategy revealed today was developed by Mainsoft as a means to deliver the highest caliber technology to its customers who, already numbering over one million globally, have increasingly cited the Internet as critical to their computing experience and essential to the success of their cross platform programs.

"Mainsoft's market strategy is an example of the growing interest by vendors to provide software services on the Web," said Jim Duggan, Vice President and Research Area Director at Gartner Group in Stamford, Conn. "Increasingly, traditional software vendors are realizing the possible benefits to their customers in establishing a business-to-business Web-based 'mall' where an assortment of software services from testing, version control and porting are available via any browser. Web services will play a key role in the future since the Web is the best medium to reach Internet and smaller companies."

Two Key Strategic Tenets

Delivering new porting technologies focused on e-business providers and Internet software companies -- Mainsoft is and will continue to target its development efforts to the e-business software infrastructure market through its application porting products and services. Mainsoft enables start-ups as well as established Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) in the Internet- wireless infrastructure, Internet-based customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise business intelligence and media streaming segments to develop on the Windows platform and deploy simultaneously on Windows, UNIX and Linux.

Leveraging the Web as a delivery platform for e-porting services -- Mainsoft is building the next generation of cross-platform technology with the mission of ultimately delivering porting services via the Web. This will provide software vendors and IT professionals with the ability to outsource their porting efforts to Mainsoft Porting Centers on the Internet. By dramatically reducing initial investment requirements, ongoing costs and time-to-market for cross-platform deployments, Mainsoft is leading a paradigm shift in the application porting market.

e-porting: The Next Generation Cross-Platform Migration

Through the implementation of the e-porting Internet Initiative, Mainsoft intends to change the way companies develop applications for multiple platforms by building the cross platform foundation for the Internet economy. Despite robust demand for UNIX applications, the Windows API remains the software development environment of choice in the industry. Increasing numbers of large and small e-businesses, and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) require identical Windows and UNIX versions of software. Through development and delivery of products that employ its unique application porting technologies and industry-leading expertise, Mainsoft plans to provide porting services over the Internet, allowing its customers to focus on their core competencies and to efficiently serve their addressable markets while leveraging Mainsoft's development expertise and resources for porting. Ultimately, Mainsoft's e-porting Internet Initiative will allow developers to port code to all platforms from any Internet-connected PC, without owning the hardware required for the platforms to which that code is being ported.

"As Windows and UNIX are the major deployment platforms for e-commerce sites, porting has become a mundane necessity for the success of many e-business infrastructure vendors," said Yaacov Cohen, president of Mainsoft Corp. "Mainsoft's vision of e-porting and the e-porting Internet Initiative will allow developers to write code once in Windows, and at the click of a mouse from any Internet-connected PC, elegantly migrate applications in a manner once thought impossible. With Mainsoft's mission to be the e-porting company, we commit to transform today's expensive and tedious porting undertakings into one effortless yet powerful Web service."

Coming on the heels of the recent announcement of Microsoft.net by Microsoft Corporation, Mainsoft's e-porting Internet Initiative will provide a unique framework for extending the flexibility and ease of Web services to the development community. Mainsoft maintains a unique relationship with Microsoft through strategic agreements that have provided Mainsoft with access to source code for Windows, including Windows 2000®. Mainsoft has incorporated several million lines of original source code for Windows into its flagship product, MainWin. Mainsoft also works closely with other vendors including Sun Microsystems, Hewlett Packard, Intel and IBM to extend the operability of applications to the UNIX platforms.

About MainWin

MainWin is Mainsoft's Windows platform for UNIX systems including Linux. MainWin includes the implementation of Win32 APIs and Windows-based services on UNIX. Through strategic agreements with Microsoft, Mainsoft has access to Windows NT and Windows 2000 based source code. Mainsoft has incorporated several million lines of original Windows-based source code into MainWin. This ensures that applications developed with C, C++ and Dynamic HTML for Windows will run on UNIX as it does on Windows. To date, the company has deployed more than one million end-user licenses of MainWin. For example, some of the leading business applications re-hosted to UNIX with MainWin include: Microsoft Internet Explorer Outlook Express and Windows Media Player; Computer Associates' OpenRoad; Alcatel's X-Vision Enterprise and Magic's Enterprise Edition V.8.

About Mainsoft Corporation

Mainsoft Corporation, the e-porting company, provides companies operating in today's demanding Internet economy with a Windows platform for UNIX, including Linux. Its flagship product MainWin allows developers to create applications and deploy the software code to several different operating environments simultaneously. Mainsoft is committed to redefining porting by focusing cross platform application and migration on Internet-enabled technologies and Web services. Mainsoft's corporate headquarters is located in San Jose, California, with sales offices in Boston, Washington D.C., London and Israel. Mainsoft's customers include Fortune 1000 companies including e-businesses, ISVs, corporate enterprise software developers, government agencies and OEMs. In 1999, Crystal Systems Solutions formed a strategic alliance with Mainsoft by assuming controlling interest in the company, allowing Mainsoft and Crystal Systems Solutions to leverage financial and synergistic business opportunities in the corporate IT marketplace. For additional information on Mainsoft Corporation, call 408.544.1400 or visit the Mainsoft Web site at www.mainsoft.com.

About Crystal Systems Solutions

Crystal Systems Solutions Ltd. (Nasdaq: CRYS - news) has been providing proprietary software technologies and services for Fortune 1000 companies since 1987. Crystal's solutions include e-Business enabling for legacy systems, cross-platform migration and IT mergers and consolidations. Crystal supports its customers, both directly and via its partners, offering end-to- end solutions through consultancy, assistance and service in conjunction with its wide variety of proprietary software tools.

Crystal Systems Solutions is a member of the Formula Group (Nasdaq: FORTY - news).

The Formula Group is an international information technology company principally engaged, through its subsidiaries and affiliates, in providing software consulting services developing proprietary software products, and providing computer-based solutions.

Mainsoft and MainWin are trademarks or registered trademarks of Mainsoft Corporation in the U.S. and/or other countries.

Microsoft and Windows are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. Linux is a trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other company and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.