PRESS RELEASE

ASCOT, UK and SEATTLE, WA, USA. May 5, 2004 UK and USA based software house, Open Systems Management Ltd. ("OSM") today announced the general availability of a version for Linux environments of its COSuser user provisioning software. The release means that mid- to large-scale end user organizations now have the means to control who has access to their Linux-based applications and to manage identity information across heterogeneous networks of Linux, UNIX and Microsoft Windows systems from a central point.

Adopting Linux poses certain problems for large user organizations. They are being pressured to improve access security by legislation, internal and external auditing requirements, and through security concerns, yet there is no central user management package shipped with Linux. User provisioning software, such as COSuser, can resolve these problems while providing a positive and early Return on Investment (RoI).

Sales of identity management systems will grow to $4.6 billion by 2007, nearly doubling the $2.4 billion in revenue they generated in 2002, according to IDC. According to IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker for the last quarter of 2003, Linux servers were identified as one of the hottest growth sectors, generating $960m in quarterly revenues and showing 63.1 per cent year-on-year growth. The combination of growth markets suggests that user demand for identity management for Linux networks is set for rapid growth.

Roberta Witty, Research Director at Gartner said, "The growth of Linux systems in the enterprise will require careful management of identity information if it is to be adopted for mission critical applications."

COSuser's functionality includes centralized user administration, password synchronization, and web browser based, self-service workflow. In the new release it is hosted on any Intel server running Red Hat Linux Enterprise Server V2.1 or V3.0 and will manage any variant of Linux system based on the 2.2 kernel or above. OSM believes that the solution will be of particular interest to Red Hat Linux users. Novell, Red Hat's main competitor, offers an identity management suite based on its own Suse variant of Linux. COSuser also supports all the common UNIX variants and the Microsoft Windows operating systems. COSuser will also support identity registration for UNIX, Linux and Windows hosted applications.

It incorporates a full job scheduler, operations workflow engine and privileged user management module. Linux, like UNIX, offers systems administrators unrestricted access rights through the 'root' capability. COSuser restricts the requirement to use this privileged form of access and creates audit trails of keystrokes when it is used.

OSM's CEO, Neil Chaney, said "Linux is following the same growth curve that UNIX did in the late 1980s and early 1990s but will be even more successful. It is the same as UNIX in the way that identity information is stored locally on each system, with multiple users being the norm even on desktop Linux systems. This causes a potential problem for security officers in administering these user accounts."

Gerry Gebel, analyst, Burton Group said, "To fully realize all the benefits of Linux and open source systems, enterprises must incorporate these new platforms into their identity management strategy."

COSuser for Linux is available immediately from OSM.

About OSM

Open Systems Management (OSM) — a UK company, founded in 1988 and based out of Ascot, UK and Seattle, WA, USA — develops and markets COSuser, a UNIX or Linux hosted user provisioning solution that incorporates nine years of real-world experience of providing centralized user administration software. OSM is backed by 3i, Europe's largest venture capital investment company. Notable customers include Bloomberg, Duke Energy, Iams, Lloyds TSB Bank, West Corp. and Northumbrian Water.

• Visit the COSuser web site at: www.cosuser.com.

• Visit OSM's corporate web site at: www.osmcorp.com.

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