mValent Senior Vice President Swapnil Shah Named One of Boston Business Journal’s 40 Under 40

Eighth Annual Award Recognizes Accomplishment
of Young Leaders in Greater Boston

BURLINGTON, Mass. – October 7, 2005 – mValent, Inc. today announced that Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development Swapnil Shah has been honored with the Boston Business Journal’s prestigious “40 Under 40” Award. In its eighth year, the award recognizes 40 promising Greater Boston area business and civic leaders under the age of 40 who have made significant contributions in their respective fields.

Shah helped launch mValent during his tenure as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Charles River Ventures in 2002. mValent develops software to automate complex IT tasks involved in configuring and managing business-critical applications. mValent customers are large enterprises and include Boston area companies such as State Street Bank, MFS Investment Management and Raytheon. As Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development, Shah defines mValent’s vision and long-term strategy.

“Boston's competitive advantage is its collective brainpower,” said Michael Olivieri, publisher of the Boston Business Journal. “Our 40 Under 40 class reflects the deep talent pool that gives Boston its economic edge.”

Honorees are selected by an editorial committee after the Boston Business Journal solicits nominations from the business community. Each year, the selection process gets tougher as the quality of the nominations climb, said George Donnelly, editor of the Boston Business Journal. “It's a humbling experience to review the nominations,” said Donnelly. “Our goal is to choose a 40 Under 40 class that highlights individual achievement and also represents the breadth and promise of the local economy.”

“I am honored to receive a Boston Business Journal 40 Under 40 award,” said Shah. “I have greatly benefited from the opportunities that the Boston area offers as a vibrant center of technology innovation, and am gratified to be identified as a contributor to that climate as well as a beneficiary.”

Shah’s entrepreneurial accomplishments feature some of Boston’s noteworthy technology companies. He began his career in the Boston area with Cambridge Technology Group in Cambridge, and was among the founding employees at Open Environment Corp. in Allston, Mass., a software company spun off from Cambridge Technology Group in 1992. Shah led Open Environment through a highly successful public offering in 1995 and its subsequent acquisition by Borland in 1996.

In 1997, Shah founded and launched WebSpective Software in Needham, Mass. to develop software for large Internet data centers. Over the next two years he helped grow WebSpective through a strong product offering and key strategic partnerships, until its successful acquisition by Inktomi (now Yahoo!) in October 1999. At Inktomi, he built and ran the wireless division and served as chief strategist.