WhiteCross, Ardent to Deliver High Performance Data Analysis

Creating a combined solution that will offer the fastest data loading and extraction capabilities on the market, WhiteCross Systems, a leader in large-scale data analysis, has signed an agreement with the leading global data management software company, Ardent Software, allowing WhiteCross to resell Ardent’s DataStage. WhiteCross will employ DataStage to automate the extraction, transformation and loading (ETL) of data into systems it develops for telecommunications and e-commerce customers, enabling them to load and analyze unlimited amounts of data faster and more efficiently than ever before.

WhiteCross works with leading companies to assist with the task of analyzing vast amounts of customer loyalty data. Currently, WhiteCross is building a high-performance demonstration system to illustrate how companies can achieve significant savings in development time by automating the process of extraction, transformation and loading of data. Performance tests conducted on call center details demonstrated that the combined solution can load five billion calls per day from mainframe systems onto the WhiteCross RDBMS. From this, information about customers, demographics, markets, competitors, products, pricing and promotions can be analyzed immediately without the use of indexes or other time consuming techniques. The information can then be used for personalization, customer segmentation and targeting, pricing and tax analysis, call profiling, and detecting and predicting 'churn.'

Companies are recognizing that they need to get the most from their customer data in order to remain competitive and make intelligent business decisions. "We work with managers to understand customer acquisition and retention patterns, which helps them understand how their business models are performing. With Ardent's DataStage, we can now import data from any source, building a data repository so that users can have accurate information on demand," said John K. Thompson, vice president of worldwide marketing, WhiteCross Systems. "With this solution, our customers gain an accurate, holistic view of their enterprise information, enabling them to make decisions based on fact, not gut feelings."

The demonstration system will use DataStage from Ardent to load data into the WhiteCross RDBMS, which is compliant with the standard ANSI SQL '92. This database environment sits on the WhiteCross Data Exploration Server (WX/DES), which provides ad-hoc, free form queries to ensure responsive and rapid data analysis using tools from WhiteCross or third party analysis products like Brio or Business Objects. WX/DES has an open x86 architecture and uses the power of hundreds or thousands of processors. The demonstration model uses telecommunications data as a source environment on a market-leading relational database.

"Our DataStage is continually proven to be the top-performing ETL technology. WhiteCross chose to partner with Ardent because we can take data from multiple sources, check it, cleanse it and load it onto the WX/DES faster and more reliably than any other vendor," said Mikael Wipperfeld, vice president of data warehouse marketing, Ardent. "The combination of our technologies offers the most powerful data analysis solution available today."

About WhiteCross Systems

WhiteCross is a pioneer and leader in the area of large-scale data analysis including reporting, multidimensional analysis, data-mining and data exploration. WhiteCross has proven the ability to analyze large-scale databases using its Data Exploration Server (WX/DES). Where other analytical systems require significant investment in personnel to tune and operate, WhiteCross allows organizations to load the data and ask ad-hoc questions immediately without the use of indexes and other time consuming data management techniques. The WX/DES enables true ad-hoc, free form, "train-of-thought" queries against terabytes of data for rapid, "real-time" responses.

WhiteCross Systems supports and extends its customers ability to grow their businesses with the market leading WX/DES platform and a staff of experienced consultants. WhiteCross consultants use their knowledge of large-scale data analysis to augment the experience of clients' personnel.

Further information on WhiteCross is available on the Internet at www.whitecross.com.

About Ardent Software

Ardent Software is a leading global data management software company. Ardent develops and markets data integration infrastructure software for e-business, data warehousing and analytical applications, and enterprise portals; along with embedded databases and tools for developing and deploying packaged applications. With worldwide sales and service operations, and 1,000 resellers in more than 50 countries, Ardent is one of the top software companies in the world. More than 60,000 customers and 2.2 million users in virtually ever aspect of business and government use solutions that are powered by Ardent technology. Ardent is headquartered in Westboro, Massachusetts.

The company's common stock trades on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol ARDT. For more information, visit Ardent's web site at www.ardentsoftware.com.