Media Company Agora SA Becomes First Polish Business To Buy IBM POWER7 Systems

Will Use New Systems to Reduce Data Center Costs; Analyze Data Across Media Channels

WARSAW, Poland, May 6, 2010 - IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Agora SA, one of Poland's largest
media companies operating across print, Internet, radio and outdoor
advertising channels, has acquired four of IBM's new POWER7 systems to reduce
its data center costs and provide better service to its customers by managing
millions of data-intensive transactions across its media channels and
analyzing that data in real time.

(Logo: www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090416/IBMLOGO )

POWER7 systems offer industry-leading return on investment through
dramatic improvements in price/performance, energy savings and virtualization
for server consolidation. The new systems can deliver four times the
performance and four times the virtualization capability for the same price
– and are three to four times more energy efficient than previous POWER6
systems. The new POWER7 systems are highly-tuned and optimized to help
clients more quickly draw insights from vast amounts of data to anticipate
emerging business trends, capture new opportunities and avoid risks.

One of the main areas to benefit from the four Power 750 systems at Agora
SA will be the group's web services, reaching over 11 million users. The new
servers will also support Agora's back-office business processes.

Using POWER7's dynamic workload-balancing and virtualization
technologies, for example, Agora will be able to better manage changes in
demand for its services while ensuring the maximum utilization of its
systems. The new server infrastructure is also expected to result in a
reduction in maintenance costs and energy consumption.

"Simplifying IT infrastructure is a top priority for clients like Agora
SA who want to focus on running their businesses rather than managing their
servers," said Marcin Gajdzinski, General Business Manager, IBM Poland.
"IBM's POWER7 servers are designed to help businesses tackle the most data
intensive challenges while at the same time creating efficiencies in costs
and energy."

The deal was signed in February and IBM's Polish business partner Matic
Sp. z o.o. has assisted with the implementation of the new servers.

POWER7 systems support consolidation for UNIX, i and Linux workloads. By
virtualizing the resources on a scalable Power System, the applications can
be moved across the entire server, leveraging a dynamic workload-balancing
capability.

About Agora SA

Agora SA is one of the largest and well known media companies in Central
& Eastern Europe. Since 1999, the company has been listed on the Warsaw Stock
Exchange. Agora's portfolio includes newspapers, magazines, internet
projects, radio and outdoor advertising, as well as the sale of books with
music and movies. The company's flagship product is the "Gazeta Wyborcza" -
the largest opinion newspaper in Poland. Agora is also the publisher of the
free newspaper "Metro" (the third most read daily in Poland) as well as 14
color magazines nationwide.

For more information on Agora SA go to: www.agora.pl/agora_eng/

About Matic

Matic Sp. z o.o. has been operating on the Polish IT market since 1990.
Matic's portfolio includes not only hardware and software, but most
importantly supporting companies and institutions to solve their IT problems.
Matic specializes in solutions providing: security data storage, reducing the
cost of managing growing volumes of data and increasing efficiency of the
organization through efficient data archiving system. For more information on
Matic go to: www.matic.com.pl/

About IBM

For more information on IBM go to: www.ibm.com/us/en/

    Contact(s) information

    Katarzyna Janik
    IBM Media Relations (Poland)
    +48-22-878-6640
    Katarzyna.Janik@pl.ibm.com

    Rick Bause
    IBM Media Relations (United States)
    +1-845-892-5463
    rbause@us.ibm.com

Katarzyna Janik, IBM Media Relations (Poland), +48-22-878-6640, Katarzyna.Janik at pl.ibm.com; or Rick Bause, IBM Media Relations (United States), +1-845-892-5463, rbause at us.ibm.com