MERANT Middleware Integrates into IBM's WebSphere

MERANT announced a new agreement with IBM to integrate MERANT's market-leading data access middleware technology into IBM's WebSphere software platform for e-business. This agreement will extend WebSphere's capabilities for building and deploying e-business applications across multiple platforms and databases. With the MERANT - IBM relationship, businesses can now leverage their significant investments in their enterprise databases, extending the power of their WebSphere applications to more effectively connect with customers, partners, suppliers and employees.

Prudential, one of the largest financial institutions in the United States, has already realized the benefits from the MERANT - IBM partnership.

"PrudentialSecurities.com services thousands of customers," said Paul Adler, senior vice president and chief technology architect for Prudential Securities. "With that level of volume and service, Prudential needs high-available, high-performance solutions that can support 24x7 transactional processing. We're currently working with IBM, leveraging WebSphere's flexibility and scalability to expand the PrudentialSecurities.com e-business offering. We're excited about IBM's recent agreement with MERANT, which will enable us to streamline our development and deployment efforts and provide our customers with rapid and reliable real-time access to their account information."

IBM WebSphere delivers a flexible and open platform for building scalable, next-generation business applications. Enabled for WebSphere, MERANT's data access middleware technology, SequeLink 5.0, provides transaction-based Java database connectivity (JDBC) to enterprise data sources including DB2 Universal Database, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Informix, and Sybase.

"As the industry continues to demand total solutions for building faster and better e-business applications, we are continuously looking at ways to provide a more comprehensive development environment for our customers," said Paraic Sweeney, vice president, Business Transformation, IBM Software Group. "With data being at the heart of all e-business applications, the combination of IBM WebSphere Application Server and MERANT's data access technology enables businesses to build sophisticated e-business solutions that can access additional data across a wide variety of databases."

"Today's announcement supports the MERANT Egility framework, which combines MERANT's market-leading technologies, best practices and technology partnerships to deliver a complete e-business solution to customers," said Eric Egertson, MERANT vice president of Business Development. "IBM WebSphere is the cornerstone of IBM's e-business solutions, and tightly integrated with MERANT's leading data access technology, customers can take advantage of their data across multiple e-business environments for a competitive advantage. We're proud to be working with IBM in this venture."

About IBM WebSphere software platform for e-business

IBM WebSphere's customizable family of products provides the industry's most scalable e-business software foundation and application services, and delivers a flexible and open platform on which to build next-generation e-business applications. Based on WebSphere Application Server, the WebSphere Software Platform supports business applications from simple Web publishing through enterprise-scale transaction processing. Through modular, integrated application services, such as Lotus Domino for rich collaboration capabilities and WebSphere Commerce Suite for high-performance, scalable commerce sites, the WebSphere platform transforms the way businesses manage customer, partner and employee relationships. Tightly integrated business and Web content development tools and Web site management capabilities deliver the most advanced and productive end-to-end application development, deployment and integration for sophisticated e-business solutions. Information about the complete WebSphere Software platform is on the Web at www.software.ibm.com/websphere.

About MERANT

MERANT is a leading global e-business software solutions company that e-enables its customers. MERANT delivers complete application solutions to accelerate a company's e-business initiatives. Founded in 1976, MERANT is a global organization with over $360 million in annual revenues, 2,000 employees and more than 500 technology partners. More than 5 million professionals use MERANT technology and solutions at 35,000 customer sites, including the entire Fortune 100, the majority of the Global 500 and over 400 leading dotcoms. For additional information, visit www.merant.com.

Contact MERANT, Lori Baccanari, 919-461-4241, lori.baccanari@merant.com or FitzGerald Communications, Mitchell Derman, 703-248-7210, mderman@fitzgerald.com.