SOFTWIN opens new office in Germany

Siemens gets into SOFTWIN

SOFTWIN, producer of BitDefender, an award-winning provider of security software and services, announces today the opening of its new office in Germany.

Martin Siemens, former CEO of H+BEDV, has been appointed to take over the leadership of SOFTWIN GmbH Germany. Siemens, an experienced manager with a solid background in the AntiVirus field, will be a valuable asset for SOFTWIN. He previously worked with several companies directly contributing to the increase of their annual turnover. Several members of his former team will join the newly formed BitDefender team in Germany, therefore guaranteeing value added services for all new German customers.

"Our main target for the German market is "small and medium business" (companies that have from 10 to 300 computers) and we intend to secure a major share of this market until 2007. I have chosen to represent BitDefender in Germany, as I believe that the BitDefender product line is a winner on any market", stated Martin Siemens, the newly appointed CEO at SOFTWIN GmbH. "BitDefender is already a presence in Germany, so we can predict a brilliant future for the next years", Siemens concluded.

"We consider this alliance as a symbiosis to improve our contact with German customers" said Florin Talpes, CEO of SOFTWIN. "Considering Germany as being one of the most exciting and important AV markets in the world, we aim to offer best services together with best security products", Florin Talpes added.

Germany is one of the leading European markets in every aspect of the antivirus software distribution and sales. The German-speaking countries are expected to reach the significant level of around 30% of the Western European IT security market within the next two years (IDC). Moreover, a new trend became obvious during the last few years: customers increasingly want to avoid the management of security assignments, including antivirus scanning, intrusion detection, e-mail scanning, firewall management and Internet traffic filtering. Under these circumstances, the goal is to outsource these highly expensive activities to a vendor able to offer them in a scalable manner at a fixed cost.

The main aim of the new office consists of providing local technical support in German, as well as improving customer dedicated services by developping new products and product features according to the local market demands. Furthermore, SOFTWIN GmbH will work on establishing new partnerships while reinforcing the relationship with the existing partners on the German speaking markets.

The registered office will be located in Tettnang, a strategic town situated in Alpine scenery bordered by two other German speaking countries: Austria and Switzerland. Additionally, Tettnang is a city with highly trained IT-people, offering opportunities for development of trade establishments and growing business potential.

About SOFTWIN
Founded in 1990, SOFTWIN is a leading provider of PC anti-virus software and computer security services. The company has developed and applied cutting-edge technologies in over 3,500 software applications and data conversion projects for Fortune 500 companies in the United States and Europe. BitDefender(tm), its flagship product, is only the third product of its kind in the world to receive ICSA certification for Windows XP and the first to be awarded for groundbreaking innovation by the European Commission and Academies. SOFTWIN is headquartered in Bucharest, Romania, and employs more than 450.
Company Website: http://www.softwin.ro

About BitDefender(tm)
The mission of the SOFTWIN's Data Security Division is to ensure the protection of systems against computer viruses, to do antivirus research, to develop new technologies for monitoring all possible ways to infect a system and, last but not least, to educate the IT public of the danger of computer viruses. Launched as a new brand in November 2001, BitDefender(tm) now provides security solutions to satisfy the protection requirements of today's business environment, enabling management of all complex threats that endanger a network, from a small local area to large multi-server, multi-platform WAN's. BitDefender Antivirus solutions are available either on the Internet or at local software distributors.
Website: http://www.bitdefender.com

BitDefender and the BitDefender logo are trademarks or registered trademarks, in the United States, EU and certain other countries, of SOFTWIN SRL, Romania. Additional company and product names may be trademarks or registered trademarks of the individual companies and are respectfully acknowledged.