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To: Vendit™ who wrote (21864)	6/14/1999 7:34:00 AM
From: Glenn D. Rudolph	Respond to of 41369

INTERVIEW-BackWeb <BWEB.O> seeks strategic partners By Aimee Rhodes TEL AVIV, June 14 (Reuters) - Eli Barkat, co-founder of Israeli Internet software maker BackWeb Technologies Inc., hopes to forge strategic partnerships and line up industry leaders as customers before major competitors rise up to challenge him. BackWeb's technology enables companies to communicate business-critical, time-sensitive information in any digital format to clients or employees via the Internet. "Typically our customers refer to us as the FedEx (Federal Express) of the Internet because we bring the dimension of priority to critical information on the 'net," Barkat said. A former paratrooper in the Israeli army, Barkat, 36, says his strategy is to establish BackWeb's technology as the standard for Internet communication as fast as possible. He stands a better chance now with $66 million raised in an initial public offering (IPO) of 5.5 million shares on the Nasdaq exchange in New York last Tuesday, four years after founding the company. "When it comes to Internet infrastructure companies, it's about barriers to entry and time-to-market advantage and how quickly a company can become the ubiquity out there," Barkat, BackWeb's chief executive officer, told Reuters. BackWeb's technology uses idle network connections to deliver huge amounts of information without paralysing the system or interfering with normal network traffic, Barkat said. "Most of the time you are logged on to the Internet you are reading something and your line isn't being used. When you are using the line, BackWeb identifies that you asked for the line and gives it back." Barkat founded the company in 1995. It had losses of $14.6 million in 1998 on sales of only $9.5 million but now counts 200 clients including AT&T Corp <T.N>, Compaq Computer Corp. <CPQ.N> and Cisco System <CSCO.O>. "Cisco uses BackWeb to transfer videos to their sales people when they want to inform them of new acquisitions, (or) on the release of new products," Barkat said. "If it was done through e-mail, who would read it? Sales people don't have time to read long items." BackWeb shares surged to as much as $22 on their Nasdaq debut after pricing at $12 per share, producing one of the largest one-day IPO gains in recent weeks. Shares closed on Friday at $16-7/8. BackWeb has forged relationships with business software companies SAP <SAPG.F> of Germany and Baan <BAAN.AS> in the Netherlands to distribute its products. The company also works with customers, partners and third-party software vendors to develop applications built on top of BackWeb technology, Barkat said. He said his strategy was to dominate specific industry sectors, including telecommunications, high technology, financial services, retail and travel services. REUTERS Rtr 05:16 06-14-99