MENLO PARK, Calif., April 16, 2002-SRI International, a leading independent research institute based in Silicon Valley, today announced that its latest spin-off, Discern Communications, has received a strategic investment from Spanlink Communications. Spanlink is a worldwide provider of products and integration services for customer contact centers. The amount and terms of the investment have not been disclosed.

The investment will be used to build Discern's sales and marketing infrastructure for its automated customer service software, which makes self-service more precise, extensible and sustainable for corporations and their customers. Discern's technology is based on more than 10 years and millions of dollars of natural language R&D work at SRI International.

"SRI solves important problems for its clients through innovative research and development. Often, the best way to achieve our mission of getting our innovations into the marketplace is to Spin-off a for-profit enterprise," said Dr. Curtis Carlson, president and CEO of SRI International. "Discern Communications offers a very compelling technology for the next generation of human-computer interaction and, more specifically, a means to greatly improve the nature of automated customer service."

Discern Makes Customer Self-Service More Precise, Automated, and Effective
In everyday life, customers ask questions and make comments in their "natural language", such as English. However, most customer service software applications do not understand natural language. This forces customers to use difficult interaction methods like hierarchical menus and imprecise search mechanisms when trying to get answers from software applications. Customer satisfaction and loyalty may suffer as a result. Companies therefore under-utilize their automated self-service solutions and instead staff their contact centers with extensive numbers of personnel to meet customer expectations.

Discern allows customer service and support centers to answer web, email or phone inquiries without human intervention by providing software that automatically understands typed or spoken language in terms of sentences or concepts, just like people do. The result is accurate, concise, and relevant answers to customer questions. Discern's technology offers customers an intuitive way to access information from multiple data sources quickly and easily while providing accessible output to customers through a variety of devices, including mobile phones and handhelds.

Discern's technology integrates easily with customer relationship management, computer telephone integration, and content management systems. This provides contact centers with a solution that rapidly and seamlessly integrates with its current infrastructure.

"With an advanced technology and the benefit of some of the world's best R&D as its foundation, we believe that Discern offers the customer service marketplace the most intelligent natural language solution available today," said Steve Obsitnik, president and CEO of Discern Communications. "We can improve the customer service experience by offering a solution that is truly built from the customer's perspective while helping enterprises meet customer needs in a cost-effective manner."

About Discern Communications
Discern Communications provides products that automate the deployment and operation of question answering for customer service and support centers. Whether a customer's query comes from a Web page, an email or the phone, Discern provides highly precise answers, dramatically improves customer satisfaction, reduces human resource reliance, and offers a low life-cycle management cost. Discern's products are currently used by multinational corporations and U.S. government agencies.

About SRI International
Silicon Valley-based SRI International (http://www.sri.com) is one of the world's leading independent research and technology development organizations. Founded as Stanford Research Institute in 1946, SRI has been meeting the strategic needs of clients for more than 55 years. The nonprofit research institute performs contract research and development for government agencies, commercial businesses and private foundations. SRI is well known for its innovations in information technology, telecommunications, engineering, pharmaceuticals, chemistry, physics, and the public policy areas of education, health, and economic development. In addition to conducting contract R&D, SRI licenses its technologies, forms strategic partnerships and creates spin-off companies.