NEW YORK, NY, February 15, 2000-IXnet, Inc. (Nasdaq: EXNT) announced today it has entered into a business alliance with Cisco Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO) to create an intelligent IP Extranet for the financial services community, based on Cisco's infrastructure and network management platform. IXnet and Cisco will work on systems and product development of high-performance voice over IP (VoIP) solutions, customer service systems, advanced directory and messaging services, and tailored solutions development and consulting.

IXnet and Cisco will work together to build a multi-service network backbone to enhance the existing IXnet Extranet which currently connects over 600 financial services firms in 44 financial centers. The enhanced IP network, to be rolled out within the next 12 months, will allow IXnet to quickly deploy enhanced services with greater flexibility and efficiency.IXnet's enhanced IP network will build on its existing Cisco infrastructure and will include multi-service platforms consolidating voice, data and video traffic, delivering a wide range of services over single connections into customers' premises. Additional Cisco equipment and systems will be integrated into IXnet's Network Operation Control Centers in New York, London, and Sydney, as well as into Points of Presence and customer sites. IXnet currently has 72 points of presence and more than 1450 Customer Access Nodes.

"IXnet shares our vision of enabling the New World of communications for their customers," said Kevin Kennedy, senior vice president, service provider line of business, Cisco Systems. "We are pleased to team with IXnet in building out their infrastructure to create a carrier-scale network for the rapid delivery of new Internet services."

"Together with Cisco-the leader in networking technologies-IXnet and IPC will change the way the financial services world communicates," said David Walsh, CEO of IXnet. "We will deliver enormous bandwidth, functionality, and content to the desktop-in a secure, highly fault-tolerant environment. Together, Cisco and IXnet will build the killer-app for the most demanding and sophisticated community of users in the world."

Financial terms are not being disclosed.