SPSS Inc Completes Acquisition of ShowCase Corp

After receiving overwhelming approval from shareholders of both companies, SPSS Inc, a worldwide provider of analytical solutions for creating more profitable customer relationships, completed its acquisition of ShowCase Corp, a leading provider of enterprise intelligence solutions for IBM iSeries (AS/400) computing systems. SPSS announced its intent to acquire ShowCase on Nov. 7, 2000. The terms of the initial announcement did not change and SPSS will issue approximately 3,750,000 shares of its common stock.

"We are pleased with the timely completion of this acquisition. Despite challenging market conditions, we completed the transaction within the terms and time frame committed to in early November," said Jack Noonan, SPSS president and CEO. "This merger is very exciting to SPSS as it creates an important new opportunity for us in the rapidly growing and underserved business intelligence market for iSeries systems. According to Dataquest, the market for business intelligence software on the iSeries platform is currently at $1.9 billion and will grow to $7.0 billion by 2002. This growth represents an exciting opportunity to expand our sales channel and offer more solutions to the growing middle-market customer base currently served by ShowCase."

Continued Noonan, "This merger also provides us with additional talented people to sell and implement our solutions, broadens our technology, improves our cash position and brings new management talent to our senior team. Jon Otterstatter, who served as ShowCase's executive vice president, technology, leads our research and development group. This group encompasses the research and development, technical support and the information systems units of both companies."

ShowCase was built around the development of enterprise intelligence solutions for the iSeries platform and recently broadened its offerings to run on Windows NT. Under SPSS' recently announced new corporate structure, ShowCase is a division of SPSS that delivers a combination of SPSS and ShowCase products to middle-market customers with iSeries computing systems. Patrick Dauga, who served as ShowCase's executive vice president of worldwide sales, leads this division.

The ShowCase division is one of five recently outlined by SPSS, which also include:

• Solutions - focused on selling our new branded analytical solutions, such as CustomerCentric, to corporate executives.
• Technologies - selling developer products, such as analytical components and solution development frameworks, to corporate executives, typically at independent software vendors (ISV's). These solutions will be built into analytical applications by software developers and resold as an integral part of the ISV's offering to their customers.
• Products - focused on selling analytical products, such as Clementine and SPSS, for use by analysts and researchers.
• Market Research - focused on selling end-to-end data collection and analysis solutions to top executives in the market research industry and corporate market research departments.

"This merger means ShowCase can strengthen its leadership position in the business intelligence market," said Dauga. "As a division of SPSS, we can continue to build on our tradition of technological innovation and expand the solutions and services our customers worldwide have come to know and trust."

Noonan concluded, "The combined SPSS and ShowCase entity will enable iSeries users to make the most of their customer data by combining the historical analysis of ShowCase solutions with the predictive power of SPSS analytics."

"This merger was a logical step for ShowCase," said Ken Holec, former president and CEO of ShowCase. "Since the company's inception in 1988, we have seen tremendous growth in terms of revenues, customer base and employees. With the transaction's completion, I am confident that SPSS will successfully leverage their technology and expertise with that of ShowCase to continue the growth in this division, as well as throughout the entire organization."

In addition to the merger, SPSS shareholders approved the other proposals on the ballot, which included the company's 2000 Equity Incentive Plan and 2000 Qualified and Nonqualified Employee Stock Purchase Plans.

About ShowCase Corporation

ShowCase Corporation provides Enterprise Intelligence solutions to help companies discover and seize business opportunities in an evolving global marketplace. ShowCase offers the first integrated Web content management and business intelligence solution to help companies solve their strategic business information needs. Through a worldwide team, ShowCase offers reporting and analytic solutions in areas such as financial management and customer relationship management (CRM). The ShowCase Web site can be found at www.ShowCasecorp.com.

About SPSS Inc

SPSS Inc enables organizations to develop more profitable customer relationships by providing analytical solutions that discover what customers want and predict what they will do. The company delivers analytical solutions at the intersection of customer relationship management and business intelligence. SPSS analytical solutions integrate and analyze market, customer and operational data in key vertical markets worldwide including: telecommunications, health care, banking, finance, insurance, manufacturing, retail, consumer packaged goods, market research and the public sector.

Headquartered in Chicago, SPSS has more than 40 offices, more than 1000 employees and 2000 pro forma revenues of $157.8 million. The company also has received the following honors: No. 77 on Forbes 2000 list of the "200 Best Small Companies" and No. 12 on the 2000 DM Review 100; placed No. 16 on the 2000 Soft-letter 100, a ranking of the top 100 personal computer software companies in the United States; and No. 115 in the 2000 Software 500, a ranking of the world's largest software vendors by Software Magazine; listed on Working Mother magazine's "100 Best Companies for Working Mothers" for 2000. For more information, visit www.spss.com.

Contact SPSS, Susan Kalell, 800-525-4980, pr@spss.com.