Independent Research Firm Releases Web 2.0 Case Study About Awareness, Inc. Customer Northwestern Mutual

WALTHAM, MA--(Marketwire - October 5, 2007) - Awareness, Inc. today announced that its customer Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company has been featured in a report published by Forrester Research, Inc. titled, "Case Study: Northwestern Mutual's Enterprise Web 2.0 Journey." Over the last year, Northwestern Mutual has worked with Awareness' enterprise social media platform to develop internal online communities to increase communication as well as team and individual productivity. The Forrester report can be accessed at http://forrester.com/Research/Document/Excerpt/0,7211,42738,00.html.

With Awareness' enterprise social media platform, Northwestern Mutual has created an employee-generated online community that helps to capture and share important institutional memory and also encourage robust discussion amongst employees. Northwestern Mutual has embraced Web 2.0 and social media tools to capture and share the knowledge required to fuel its next stage of growth.

Authored by Forrester analyst Oliver Young, this independent research report positions Northwestern Mutual as a "leader in enterprise Web 2.0 adoption," and outlines how "the firm began its push into Web 2.0, bringing blogs, RSS, and eventually wikis into the business." One of the report's focus areas explores the company's compliance and security concerns and how they worked with Awareness to address these issues. "As a firm operating in a highly regulated industry, [Northwestern Mutual] had to address compliance and archiving, so from the very onset [Northwestern Mutual] looked for a solution that would keep it compliant... Strong protections were also put in place to block prohibited language and flag potentially offensive words and phrases" (Case Study: Northwestern Mutual's Enterprise Web 2.0 Journey, Forrester Research, Inc., October 2, 2007).

"Northwestern Mutual, like many of our enterprise customers, is a strong example of a company that is successfully using Web 2.0 tools to help them meet and surpass current business goals," said Awareness CTO and Co-Founder David Carter. "The compliance and security of their implementation via the Awareness platform is particularly noteworthy because it shows that Web 2.0 can be strategically implemented for enterprise needs and concerns."

About Awareness

Awareness is an on-demand social media platform where enterprises deploy Web 2.0 technologies to achieve real business benefits. Awareness leverages the power of user-generated content -- blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS, social networking, photos, videos, forums, discussion groups, etc. -- to create online communities that connect an organization's employees, customers, prospects and partners. Major corporations such as McDonald's, Kodak, the New York Times Co., Northwestern Mutual and Cannondale Bicycle Corp. use Awareness to improve employee communication and collaboration, drive new forms of revenue and channels, conduct market research and create a "corporate memory." An Awareness community can be seamlessly integrated into existing intranets or public web sites, or presented as a new branded web presence. Backed by Greylock Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners, Awareness is headquartered in Waltham, Mass. For more information visit http://www.awarenessnetworks.com/.