Madrid, 29 July 2002 - Visual Century Research S.L. and Software AG today announced that Software AG has acquired a 25% share of Visual Century Research S.L., consolidating the partnership agreement signed by both companies in April.

ViA2 Platform, a complete solution developed entirely by Visual Century to capture digital or analog video, analyze it, annotate it, and publish it on the internet or any other means, uses Software AG's Tamino XML Server to store the metadata extracted from video and audio files. Along with the technological collaboration, a strong partnership between both companies has developed, eventually leading to the acquisition by Software AG of a share of Visual Century.

The purchase is part of the diversification strategy of Software AG, which now opens a new lline of business targeting the media broadcasting and publishing sector with content management solutions based on XML technology. Financial terms of this transaction were not released.

About Visual Century Research

Visual Century Research (VCR) is a technology company created in 2001 by a group of entrepreneurs with audiovisual and multimedia research backgrounds. The first product developed by VCR was the automatic video cataloguer VideoIngest, which was chosen by Televisió de Catalunya to be integrated within its digitalization project. Using the VideoIngest technology, VCR has developed a number of advanced products which stand out thanks to their innovative vision of the audiovisual content. Amongst these products there is ViA2 Platform, a modular, high performance solution based in XML to capture digital or analog video, analyze and annotate it, and publish it on the internet.