ACQUISITION OF ARDENT WILL CHANGE DISTRIBUTION LANDSCAPE

Prophet 21, Inc. has announced that the recent Informix acquisition of Ardent and its trio of databases, UniVerse, UniData and O2, will create a unique opportunity for wholesale distribution customers and vendors using Microsoft's SQL Server 7.0 Oracle and IBM DB2. Given the heavy reliance on the UniVerse database by software providers such as NxTrend, Eclipse Software, and Prelude, Prophet 21 intends to provide customers of these vendors with a flexible and fast migration path to Prophet 21 Wholesale on the Microsoft Windows NT SQL Server platform.

The Ardent acquisition poses a technology investment issue for companies using UniVerse, UniData and O2. Informix has stated that it will continue to support these clients for the time being before beginning a migration path to its own relational flagship Informix database.

Scott Deutsch, vice president of marketing, Prophet 21 stated, "As we see it, a product transition of this magnitude at Informix can take many months to implement. After this acquisition, Informix will have to rationalize a cohesive strategy around UniVerse, UniData, O2, the new Cloudscape product as well as its own database products. This level of change will clearly affect any company's ability to operate in a 'business as usual mode.'" Deutsch continued, "Here at Prophet 21, we understand that wholesale distributors today need to have a database that is scalable and flexible enough to handle growth and continue to perform to meet market expectations. That is why Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 is our database of choice."

Over the past ten years, the database market has undergone tremendous changes, leaving Microsoft and IBM strongly positioned to drive market share and consistently improve database technology. Initially, the market was heavily fragmented with few competitors holding a significant market share. Over the years, the market has seen heavy consolidation with databases being swallowed up by larger, more innovative players, resulting in majority positions for Microsoft, IBM and Oracle. As a result, companies that use Microsoft SQL Server or IBM's DB2 have access to competitively innovative database products with large pools of experts across all industries to choose from. According to Dataquest, Informix has seen its share of the database market drop from 4.8% in 1997 to 4.4% in 1998.

Commenting on the technology trend of the consolidation of several players into a smaller number of dominant suppliers, Robert Dorin, research director, Aberdeen Group, says, "Significant disruption is an inevitable result of this consolidation for users of the displaced technology. By making a strong commitment to Microsoft's SQL Server database, Prophet 21 has aligned itself with the industry's leading database in the middle market, a technology that will continue to evolve- nearly the certainty of death and taxes."