FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SD TIMES SETS NEW RECORD

Largest-ever issue demonstrates success of new publication, robust strength of the software-development market

Oyster Bay, N.Y., March 31, 2001 - BZ Media LLC today announced that the April 1, 2001, issue of SD Times, the twice-monthly newspaper of record for software development managers, has reached a new record-setting folio of 48 pages.

"In just over a year, SD Times has truly established itself as the official voice of the software development industry," said Ted Bahr, publisher of SD Times. "Our first few issues varied between 32 and 36 tabloid-sized pages. Recently, we've been consistently publishing 40- or 44-page issues. We were delighted to reach 48 pages for the first time for the April 1 issue, particularly given the overall state of the economy and the hammering that's taken place among the dot-coms," he added. "While 'pure-play' e-commerce and business-to-business start-ups are foundering, mainstream enterprises are continuing to invest in their software infrastructure."

The April 1 issue of SD Times, the 27th to be published by BZ Media, was also groundbreaking in both its events distribution and special editorial coverage. "Never before have we taken a single issue of the newspaper to three major industry events," said Bahr. "We're taking the April 1st issue to the Software Development Conference in San Jose, the Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco, and XML DevCon in New York City. This bonus distribution not only benefits this issue's advertisers, who are getting extra circulation beyond our normal 40,000, but also exposes SD Times to new readers and companies in the software development industry."

This record-setting issue of SD Times also contains a Special Report on security. "When you had small teams of programmers working on small projects, your biggest concern was to ensure that nobody walked away with the source code," said Alan Zeichick, editor-in-chief of SD Times. "This Special Report touches on two newer and bigger issues: ensuring that data exchanged via message-oriented middleware like XML isn't intercepted or falsified, and finding secure ways for distributed development teams to collaborate safely over the Internet. These are real challenges facing many enterprises today."