Press Room: 2004

Keynote’s Streaming Perspective Service Now Supports QuickTime

• Only Keynote measures performance for all major streaming formats for the Web; Microsoft® Windows Media® Player, RealNetwork’s RealPlayer and the Apple’s QuickTime
• Arbitron and Edison Media Research report 103 million in U.S used Internet audio or video broadcasts; Users turn increasingly to the Internet as a source of entertainment, news and information on the presidential campaign
• Explosive growth of broadband makes it critical to understand the end user experience and ensure quality and reliability

SAN MATEO, Calif., — January 27, 2004 — Keynote Systems (Nasdaq: KEYN), the worldwide leader in Web performance measurement and management services, today announced that its market-leading Streaming Perspective® service for optimizing audio and video streams over the Web now includes support for QuickTime. Keynote Streaming Perspective continues to dominate the streaming performance monitoring industry both in functionality and market share and is now the only service to offer support for all three of the leading streaming formats: Microsoft® Windows Media® Player, RealNetwork’s RealPlayer and now the Apple‘s QuickTime.

Streaming Perspective can now help enterprise customers, content owners and streaming hosting providers proactively optimize the end user experience of those users downloading QuickTime streams, as well as benchmark the performance of those streams.

As the enterprise increasingly looks to online technologies to tap new markets and save money, streaming video and audio are essential aspects of that integrated strategy. By providing end-to-end measurement and monitoring solutions for all major streaming media formats, Streaming Perspective helps customers ensure that their streams are delivered with consistent quality and reliability.

“The addition of QuickTime measurements to Keynote Streaming Perspective is an important step in our continued commitment to provide total performance management (TPM) to our customers,” said Shai Berger, general manager for Keynote’s Streaming Division. “As users turn with increasing frequency to the Internet as a source of entertainment, news and, in this election year, information on the presidential candidates, as evidenced by the 2004 presidential campaigns, which are using streaming as a key part of their online strategy for the candidates, political organizations and advocacy groups, it is important that our customers have a way to quantify the performance of all the formats their customers use.”

“With over 10 million downloads of QuickTime each month, QuickTime is Apple’s industry-leading, standards-based software for developing, producing and delivering high quality audio and video over wireless and broadband networks,” said Frank Casanova, Senior Director, QuickTime Product Marketing. “We are pleased that Keynote has added this important performance measurement service to its portfolio, giving our customers the opportunity to continually improve the quality of their QuickTime streams.”

The availability and widespread use of broadband connections and improvement in streaming technology have made the Internet a viable and cost effective way for major companies to market their products and services. According to a study conducted by Arbitron and Edison Media Research last year, 103 million Americans have used Internet audio or video broadcasts. The explosive growth of broadband content on the Internet makes it critical to measure the performance of that content from the end user perspective in order to meet both internal and external goals.

“VitalStream® is committed to providing its customers with reliable content delivery services. We use Keynote Streaming Perspective to validate our performance to those customers and to benchmark internal goals,” said Paul Summers, chief executive officer of VitalStream Holdings, Inc. (OTC: VSTH). “Many of our customers are major entertainment and media companies who demand the very best quality and consistent performance for their streams. With the introduction of QuickTime support, Keynote Streaming Perspective allows us to satisfy our customers and assure they are getting the best service no matter what format they choose.”

About Keynote Streaming Perspective

Streaming Perspective is a world class streaming measurement service featuring a real-time Web interface that organizes streaming data so users can quickly understand daily or weekly trends, spot common problems with streaming infrastructure, start and stop tests on demand for powerful diagnostic work and drill down to view packet statistics, trace routes and error codes for each individual measurement.

Streaming Perspective also offers a self provisioned Diagnostic Service that allows the user to control testing through a web interface. Self-provisioning puts a powerful tool in the hands of customers who need to diagnose complex streaming installations or compare service providers.

For short duration live events, Streaming Perspective offers a Live Event Service that measures streams with higher checking frequencies.

Streaming Perspective measures, compares and assures the performance of audio and video streams, diagnosing performance problems before they impact the end-user. Keynote Streaming Perspective is the industry’s most advanced service for measuring, managing and improving the performance and availability of streaming media, providing global coverage for measurements of streaming media delivery from nine U.S. and five international locations- New York, Atlanta, Washington, DC, Seattle, Miami, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, Tokyo, London, Amsterdam, Paris, Frankfurt. Streaming Perspective allows companies who rely on high quality streams to meet internal and external goals and validate service level agreements between themselves and customers or vendors.

Streaming Perspective features the latest versions of QuickTime, RealPlayer and Windows Media Player and simplifies performance management by simulating the behavior of end-users in cities around the world. It is the official source of measurement behind the Microsoft Windows Media 9 Series Certification Program.

How Streaming Perspective Works

Keynote’s Streaming Perspective service measures on-demand content ten times per hour for one minute from each location, but rate and length of measurement interval can be increased. Live or event-based measurements can be taken for the duration of the event. Keynote’s network of streaming measurement computers connects to streaming sites over T1 lines.

Keynote measures relevant statistics about streaming performance for both on-demand and live events, from user log-on to the site through streaming download. These statistics include: connection success rate (CSR), average bit rate (ABR) and StreamQ™, a proprietary metric which provides an accurate measurement of overall stream quality based on connect time, buffer time, and rebuffer time.

StreamQ is displayed as letter grades from A+ down to F that indicate the amount of time a user had to wait or experience interruptions ("Frustration Time") versus the time actually spent enjoying the content. In this way customers can rank the end user experience quantitatively.

CSR indicates the percentage of checks where scanners were successfully able to play the stream. ABR and StreamQ are based only on checks that managed to connect - failed checks are ignored for the purpose of calculating these quantities.

Availability and Pricing

QuickTime support for Streaming Perspective is available immediately.

The Monitoring service starts at $250 per month per URL. The Diagnostic service starts at $650 per month per channel. Live Event service is sold in 1-week blocks that range from $62.50 to $1237.50 depending on the bit-rate and frequency of measurements. There is a $500 minimum.

About Total Performance Management

In today’s tight economy Keynote’s services provide enterprise customers with ‘Total Performance Management’ solutions that increase return on investment and save money. ‘Total Performance Management’ is comprised of Keynote’s cost-effective and easy-to-use Web performance measurement, monitoring, management, diagnostic, load, content and usability testing services. Keynote’s overarching goal is to enable enterprise customers to leverage existing management software, increase the number of satisfied customers, reduce unnecessary capital expenditures, provide competitive advantage and deliver an optimal quality of experience to end users.

About Keynote

Founded in 1995, Keynote Systems (Nasdaq “KEYN”), The Internet Performance Authority®, is the worldwide leader in Web performance measurement and management services that improve the quality of e-business. Keynote’s services enable corporate enterprises to benchmark, diagnose, test and monitor their e-business systems both inside and outside the firewall. Approximately 2,300 corporate IT departments and 15,400 individual subscribers rely on the company's easy-to-use and cost-effective services to optimize revenues and reduce downtime costs without requiring additional complex and costly software implementations.

Keynote Systems, Inc. is headquartered in San Mateo, California and can be reached at http://www.keynote.com/ or by phone in the U.S. at 650-403-2400.

© 2004 Keynote Systems, Inc. Keynote and The Internet Performance Authority and Perspective are registered trademarks of Keynote. Other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Public Relations Contacts:

Della Lowe, Keynote Systems, Inc., (650) 403-3233, dlowe@keynote.com
Dan Berkowitz, Keynote Systems, Inc., (650) 403-3305, dberkowitz@keynote.com