4 November 2003 The IT Spending & Demand Survey was conducted by Gartner and SoundView Technology Group at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2002 held in October in Orlando, Florida. Out of 6,000 attendees, 849 participated in the survey including IT users, business executives, CIOs and people with budget authority. The survey is the most robust index for future technology spending — the respondents represent more than $33 billion of technology spending for their enterprises and the survey consists of 378,000 data points. According to Al Case, senior vice president at Gartner, "the draconian budget cuts of the past two years have flattened while demand continues to build." This natural economic phenomenon will create a gap between IT budgets and IT demand for the next six to 12 months." Mark Loehr, CEO of SoundView Technology Group, explains that "while 2003 is not likely to be a watershed year for spending, the increase in demand for technology products suggests the likelihood of a spending increase by the second half of the year. If a spending delay does occur throughout 2003, then 2004 will be a significant spending year." The survey also identifies certain IT product areas that will likely experience better growth in 2003. Those areas include application integration and development, storage, network hardware, Linux servers, as well as desktop and portable computers. An executive summary of the IT Spending & Demand Survey explains more key findings and details. About SoundView Technology Group, Inc. SoundView Technology Group, Inc. is the parent of SoundView Technology Corporation, a research driven securities firm focused exclusively on the technology sector. SoundView's services include investment banking, M&A, institutional sales and trading, and venture capital. SoundView produces comprehensive sell-side equity research on more than 180 technology companies and industries. For more information, please see www.soundview.com.

Key Findings Most 2003 spending will be for replacing, upgrading and extending core infrastructure systems There will be a very slight increase in capital budgets (which represents approximately 30% of total IT spending) Any increase in capital expense budgets will be offset by very slight decline in operating expense (70% of total IT spending) Demand for IT products and services is increasing, yet budgets and planned expenses are lagging