COMSHARE CAPITALIZES ON THE HUGE RELATIONAL DB MARKET

Comshare Inc announced at its 18th Annual Users Conference held this year in Phoenix, Ariz., that a large majority of its customers are electing to implement Comshare on centralized relational databases. Comshare is a leader in Web-based solutions for management planning and control (MPC), which comprises planning, budgeting, financial data consolidation, reporting and analysis. In fiscal year 2000, Comshare saw 34% growth in sales of its MPC solutions, a result that exceeds the 21% industry growth rate established by International Data Corporation (IDC). Fueling that growth were 250 new-name, license-fee customers and numerous add-on sales to existing customers from all over the world and in a diverse array of industries. Among the sales for Comshare BudgetPLUS, 75% were for its version designed for relational databases from Oracle, Microsoft or IBM. The remaining 25% were designed for OLAP, primarily Hyperion Essbase.

"Recent reports from IDC, Dataquest, and AMR Research demonstrate that the sales of relational databases make up approximately an $8 billion market that is very strong, growing and highly competitive," said Dennis Ganster, Comshare president and CEO. "We engineered our products to be fully Web-based, perform complex multidimensional functions, and run on mainstream relational databases as well as OLAP, including Microsoft's and IBM's OLAP databases built on their flagship relational technologies. There is a huge global market for relational databases, which means our products would appeal to a much broader customer base beyond and including that for OLAP. Quarter after quarter, the sales of our MPC solutions have consistently and conclusively shown that our strategic move to develop and market Web-based solutions for mainstream relational technology was right on, and now our growth is showing it."

Centralized Databases are Key for an MPC System

Comshare's MPC applications are built on top of a central database rather than using proprietary file structures or multiple databases that are common in many of today's systems. All users get information from this database to do their plans, budgets, reports, and analysis. A centralized database makes use of mainstream relational technology for scalability and robustness. In this configuration, a Comshare MPC system leverages the benefits of the leading mainstream relational technologies from Oracle, Microsoft and IBM, which are highly scalable, handle very large numbers of users, support advanced security systems, and integrate easily with existing ERP and transaction-based systems.

"Using a central database greatly improves data integrity and accuracy," Ganster added. "Companies no longer need to collect results, because as soon as data are entered, they are immediately available for consolidation and analysis. Moving data between applications is not required, so there are no links to maintain. Plus, you only have to make changes once, so everyone has instant access to those changes. Most important, using the database technology a company already has in place helps maximize its huge IT infrastructure investments. And the vast majority of those investments have been made in mainstream relational database systems. The result has been that companies get more application value from Comshare with less implementation and training costs for their IT staff."

Customer Praises for Their Implementations of Comshare on Relational Databases

Bob Vesely, chief financial officer, Advantage Sales and Marketing: "We had already made the decision to run our mission-critical applications on the Microsoft SQL Server database, so that was an important requirement for the solution we chose. With Comshare BudgetPLUS, if a particular prospective client approaches us to represent the company, we can readily understand whether it is a good business decision for Advantage with just the click of a mouse. It used to take about a hundred e-mails to get to the bottom of those types of questions and a week's worth of effort. With Comshare, we have data integrity and analysis capabilities at a level we never had before."

Jeffrey Van Dyke, finance manager, Gordon Food Service: "We chose Comshare BudgetPLUS running on Oracle, because it fits our expertise and our data warehouse that is stored in an Oracle relational database. We liked the technology and direction Comshare is following--client/server and Web technology with a relational database. The Web-architected design and Comshare's willingness to fully understand what we wanted to do with our new budgeting system also helped us make our decision. Using Comshare, we see time savings, faster turnaround of information, greater information sharing, and improved decision-making all year long, not just during the budgeting season."

George Azrak, vice president, information systems (IS) development for Domino's Pizza: "We have about 150 gigabytes worth of daily point-of-sale data. The Web-based Comshare solution, working in conjunction with Microsoft SQL Server OLAP Services and our data warehouse, is making more information available to more users in a timely fashion, leading to better decisionmaking. From an IS standpoint, we will continue to meet our goal to help people in every department accomplish their goals. Domino's Pizza will continue to have an excellent product at an excellent price, because this type of information flow will result in a franchise network that is efficient, profitable, successful, and growing. Comshare Decision is another weapon in our arsenal that's going to open our data to a new class of users that we have not reached before."

Dr. Jeen-Su Lim, marketing department chairman for the College of Business Administration, University of Toledo: "Current marketing books end with `the future is in business intelligence,' yet no one effectively addresses this topic. We needed to use realistic and practical systems in the College of Business to train students in making business decisions using today's huge databases containing volumes of customer information. To meet this need, we developed a new course, `Marketing Analysis and Decision-Making,' that is grounded in a Web-based application for rapid development of custom OLAP applications using Comshare's Decision software and Microsoft's SQL Server 7.0 OLAP Services database. Comshare is a leader in business intelligence software, especially in the area of management planning and control. Applying Comshare Decision, coupled with Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 OLAP Services, was the obvious choice."

About Comshare

Comshare Inc is a leading provider of e-business software applications for management planning and control (MPC), which comprises planning, budgeting, financial consolidation, management reporting and analysis. Comshare's MPC applications deliver business-critical information over the Web that can be used to make sound planning and management decisions. In business for nearly 35 years, Comshare is one of the top independent software companies, with customers around the world, many of which are Fortune 500 and Financial Times Top 1000 companies. Comshare is a Microsoft Data Warehousing Alliance Partner, an IBM Business Partner, an Oracle Business Alliance Partner, and an Hyperion Alliance Partner,. For more information on Comshare, call 1-800-922-7979, send e-mail to info@comshare.com or visit Comshare's Web site at www.comshare.com.

Contact Comshare Inc, Pete Smudde, 734-769-8742, psmudde@comshare.com.