Barlow Group

REDWOOD CITY, California

FUNAMBOL, the mobile open source software company, today announced two appointments to its executive team and named the first three members of its new Open Source Advisory Board.

Rony Greenberg has been appointed to vice president of business development for Funambol, and Marc Munford is the company's new director of sales for North America. Greenberg will be responsible for identifying business development opportunities for Funambol, including partnerships and customer relationships where open source software can increase the quality and ubiquity of mobile applications. Munford will be responsible for customer relationships throughout Canada, the United States and Mexico.

"The additions to Funambol's executive staff and the creation of the Open Source Advisory Board reflect our growth and sustainable success," said Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO, Funambol. "We continue to see increasing demand both in the enterprise and with global carriers, and the executive appointments in business development and sales will help us meet this demand. The formation of our Open Source Advisory Board will help to ensure our efforts remain focused on the community and helping developers to create the most cutting edge mobile applications."

The creation of the Open Source Advisory Board is designed to help Funambol partner with strategic open source vendors and their development communities to integrate its mobile application server into complementary solutions that give mobile customers more value and a better user experience. Appointments to the Funambol Open Source Advisory Board include:

In 2001 Andrew founded alliance Group with other industry veterans, to provide management and business strategy consulting to companies leveraging open source. Andrew is a member of the Open Source Software Institute's Board of Directors, SDForum's Board of Advisors and Chair of their annual Open Source Conference. He is on the Board of Advisors of SugarCRM and has personally advised firms such as IBM, Sun, Intel, Nokia, and numerous VCs and startups on their open source strategies.

Bickel is responsible for JBoss' strategy, corporate development and partnerships. He also serves as an advisor or board member to Arjuna, Apax Partners and Bristol Technologies.

Roberts is a pioneer in the open source enterprise application space. His strong business, marketing and product management experience coupled with more than 11 years in CRM applications have helped make him the leading voice for open source CRM technologies.

"Funambol and its Sync4j mobile application server is an important component of any company's strategy in the $300 billion mobile market," said John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM and Funambol advisory board member. "Funambol delivers critical open source solutions for wireless developers working on new applications. The company has successfully staked its claim as the leading open source solution in the mobile industry."

"Funambol is building on the proven success of open source and brings that to the mobile arena," said Bob Bickel, vice president of strategy and corporate development, JBoss, Inc. "By forming the advisory board, Funambol will collaborate with others and increase the reach of Sync4j to new companies, developers and users."

"Customers benefit from seamless integration among solutions up and down the open source software stack," said Andrew Aitken, managing partner, alliance Group, an open source management consulting firm. "Funambol appreciates the importance of the solution ecosystem and has been deliberate in its efforts to partner with leading open source communities and companies such as JBoss, SugarCRM and MySQL to benefit their customers and offer more value."

Greenberg has nearly 20 years of experience working in a variety of sales and business development management positions. Most recently, he was executive vice present of sales and business development for IXI Mobile Inc., provider of software and reference designs for personal mobile gateways, where he oversaw strategy, marketing, sales and business development. Prior to this position, Greenberg was director of strategic investment for Intel, where he had worldwide responsibility for equity and acquisition deal sources in the wireless segment for Intel Capital. Greenberg has held other management positions at Apple Isreal, DSPC/CTP, Fibronics, Orbotech, and Bank of Israel.

Munford brings more than 15 years of software startup experience to Funambol. Most recently, Munford worked as the vice president of sales and director of enterprise accounts for Visto. Prior to his position at Visto, Munford was a cofounder of NetDrive.com, an early leading Internet personal storage technology vendor. He has also held a variety of sales and business development roles at software technology companies including Orative, Insignia Solutions, NetManage and Wollongong.

Funambol is the company behind Sync4j, the world-leading open source mobile application server. Sync4j is the open standard solution for the development, software provisioning and management of all wireless services: data synchronization, remote device management and application provisioning. Funambol provides customers with commercial licensing for Sync4j, and support and custom development to fulfill all mobility needs. Sync4j supports the Open Mobile Alliance Data Synchronization and Device Management standards (OMA DS/DM) also known as SyncML. Funambol is headquartered in Redwood City, California with a development center and a sales office in Italy. For more information, contact us at info@funambol.com , or by visiting http://www.funambol.com and http://www.sync4i.com.