ILOG Java Business Rule Engine Part of VisaNet System for Visa Member Banks

SAN FRANCISCO and MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - February 5, 2001 - Inovant, the IT and processing services subsidiary of Visa International and ILOG (NASDAQ: ILOG; Nouveau Marche France) today announced an agreement whereby ILOG JRules business rule software will be used to automate portions of Inovant's new web-based profile management system. ILOG JRules will allow Inovant to better manage and maintain the business policies that support Visa's electronic interaction with its 21,000 member banks.

The new profile management system is part of Inovant's overall re-engineering of VisaNet™, the world's largest and most sophisticated consumer financial transaction processing system. Inovant operates the global transaction-processing network supporting Visa branded products. ILOG JRules will be used to automate complex validation tasks associated with Visa's 21,000 member profiles.

"We manage a tremendously complex global transaction processing system, and as we re-engineer that system to meet the rapidly growing payment volume generated by Visa, we need tools like ILOG JRules that can bring greater efficiencies to the system," said Dimitri Karavias, senior vice president of VisaNet Management Systems at Inovant. "We selected ILOG JRules because it is flexible and easy to embed, allows us to dynamically change our member profile management application, has the performance to support our highly demanding transaction volume and reduces the development cost of making changes to the profile management system."

Customizable Rule Language is Key
In addition to benefiting from ILOG JRules' close Java™ integration, the customizable rule language support in the product will allow non-technical personnel at Inovant to quickly update business rules that correlate to bank-specific programs in response to changing market and customer needs.

Business rule languages in some current rule engines are so complex that only experienced developers can use them. ILOG JRules supports the creation of flexible, adaptable business rule syntaxes. This unique capability allows business users to write rules using easy-to-understand rule terminology tailored to their own industry rather than a one-size-fits-all business rule language. Paired with JRules Rule Editor, a rule language editor that has an intuitive GUI, rule creation is greatly simplified. Other key features of the product include support for eXtensible markup language (XML), which can support the sharing of business rules on the web.

ILOG JRules is a 100% Pure Java™ business rule engine, and was the first rule engine to support integration into Enterprise Java Beans for applications running on the Java Standard Enterprise Edition (J2EE) platform. Business rule engines are software components that create and execute business rules, which are the "IF/WHEN/THEN" statements of business policy that "tell" a software program how to behave.

About ILOG
Dually headquartered in Paris and Mountain View, Calif., ILOG is the world's leading supplier of C++ and Java software components. ILOG's embeddable optimization, visualization and business rules software components dramatically shorten development times for enterprise software applications in the supply chain, telecommunications, transportation and financial services industries. In addition to optimization applications where ILOG enjoys significant market share, the company is taking an active role in the e-business software-components market. Visit http://www.ilog.com for additional information.

About Inovant
Inovant is the world's largest processor of financial transactions and operates a global network with the capacity to process up to 5,000 transactions per second. Inovant provides advanced IT development services supporting payment technology and operates 24/7 global, multi-lingual customer assistance centers. Inovant, a wholly owned subsidiary of Visa International, was formed in April 2000 when Visa moved its systems and processing services divisions into a shared services organization. Inovant will continue to provide global transaction processing for Visa, and will also explore new opportunities to utilize its expertise in high volume, high value transaction processing. Building on a legacy of innovation, Inovant supports a world in which sending receiving, validating and using information is secure, simple, and seamless.

ILOG is a registered trademark and ILOG JRules is a trademark of ILOG. VISA is a registered trademark and VisaNet is a trademark of Visa. Java and 100% Pure Java are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. All other trademarks are the properties of their respective owners.