On The Market:

Ascential Delivers Next-Generation Data Integration Software

Ascential Software Corporation unveiled industry-leading software products that give large corporations unprecedented ability to leverage their existing and growing vaults of business data for competitive and economic advantage. This new generation of Ascential's DataStage XE family of data integration products allows corporations for the first time to comprehensively integrate data from all corporate information sources - including customer relationship management (CRM), business-to-business, e-business, enterprise applications, mainframe and data warehouse environments -- within a single, company-wide business integration framework. Delivering these leadership capabilities are three new products - DataStage XE Portal Edition 1.0, DataStage PACK 1.0 for PeopleSoft and DataStage PACK 1.0 for Siebel -- and enriched versions of DataStage XE and DataStage XE/390.

The new products are designed to meet companies' demands for comprehensive data integration solutions for advanced data warehousing and beyond -- complete business integration between enterprise applications, geographically-dispersed departments, and with partners and suppliers. These new offerings enhance data integration through industry-leading advancements in:

• end-to-end meta data management,
• data integration portal infrastructure, and
• enterprise application connectivity

"Customers, industry analysts and integrators have all identified robust data integration as the crucial element for the complete success of all major IT projects -- enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, supply chain management and business intelligence applications," said Pete Fiore, president of Ascential Software Corporation. "The fundamental underlying strengths of our data integration platform, combined with these significant enhancements, give Ascential the competitive advantage to deliver this high degree of integration. These strengths are the cornerstone of our far-reaching vision of Information Asset Management."

DataStage XE Product Family -- Data Integration Driving Business

Integration

With this announcement, Ascential is introducing: -- DataStage XE 5.0 -- provides data integration, meta data management and data quality functionality. This new release incorporates breakthrough run-time performance, developer productivity and enterprise-scale meta data management. New cross-tool meta data capabilities set the standard for the industry, providing business users with the most complete meta data information available, across their entire business information environment. With a single view of meta data spanning the company's CRM, e-business, mainframe, data warehouse and enterprise application systems, DataStage XE provides business users with full confidence in the data they are using to increase their understanding of their business.

• DataStage XE Portal Edition 1.0 -- integrates portal technology and data integration applications to provide both IT developers and business users with a robust data integration solution. DataStage XE Portal Edition provides non-technical business users with an easy-to-use interface to the corporate information and reporting systems they need to make more informed business decisions. Additionally, this new product provides IT developers with a 24x7, Web-based "dashboard" to more flexibly manage their data integration environment.
• DataStage PACK 1.0 for PeopleSoft and DataStage PACK 1.0 for Siebel -- extend Ascential's commitment to enable companies to integrate data among all enterprise applications. The new DataStage PACKs (Packaged Application Connectivity Kits) allow IT groups to integrate data from PeopleSoft and Siebel applications with other enterprise applications, data warehouses or IT systems. These solutions complement Ascential's existing data integration solutions for SAP R/3 data and SAP Business Information Warehouse applications.
• DataStage XE/390 5.0 -- provides the only data integration solution to offer full, native support for mainframe and client-server environments in a single platform. The new version of DataStage XE/390 delivers productivity and performance enhancements that bring developers new, flexible options to access, extract and integrate information off the mainframe with their enterprise applications, data warehouses or IT systems. For detailed new product specifications, please see www.ascentialsoftware.com. "Having implemented CRM, e-business and portal solutions, enterprises are faced with a growing array of information silos, leading to continued frustration with their inability to deliver useful information to business users," said Doug Laney, META Group vice president, Application Delivery Strategies. "Our research shows that meta data is a key enabler of enterprise-wide data integration and the backbone of leading data integration solutions."

Customer Benefits

Ascential's new products are used by companies for both data warehousing as well as broad scale data integration for enterprise-wide applications. "DataStage XE is critical to our long-range growth plans. It enables us to turn data from many individual business units and functional groups into a form we can easily leverage for enhanced revenues and more efficient operations throughout the U.S. and Canada," said Erik Brokaw, senior business consultant for UtiliCorp United, a Fortune 100 global energy company.

"Using DataStage to drive information across our supply chain management, customer database and financial reporting systems, we're building stronger relationships with our retail partners and increasing market share," said Frank Patry, vice president of information technology at XM Radio, a leader in the emerging market for digital, satellite-based radio.

New Product Availability The new versions of DataStage are available immediately. More than 20 companies participated in the beta program for the new products, including General Motors, Helzberg Diamonds and BlueCross BlueShield Tennessee.

Complementing the September launch of a new version of Ascential's Media360 digital asset management solution, today's announcement further extends Ascential's strategy to lead the software industry in the growing market for Information Asset Management (IAM) solutions -- solutions that help businesses cost-effectively unlock the value of their business data and rich media content through more effective integration, management and re-use.

About Ascential Software

Ascential Software Corporation is a leading provider of Information Asset Management solutions to the Global 2000. Customers use Ascential products to turn vast amounts of disparate, unrefined data into reusable information assets that drive business success. Ascential's unique framework for Information Asset Management enables customers to easily collect, validate, organize, administer and deliver information assets to realize more value from their enterprise data, reduce costs and increase profitability. Headquartered in Westboro, MA, Ascential has offices worldwide and supports more than 1,800 customers in such industries as telecommunications, insurance, financial services, healthcare, media/entertainment and retail.

Contact Ascential Software, Dan Foley, 508-366-3888 x3302, dan.foley@ascentialsoftware.com.

Firstlogic Introduces Latest Information Quality Suite

Firstlogic Inc, a global provider of enterprise information quality solutions, announced it's Information Quality (IQ) software suite with powerful new features that extends matching capabilities and expands support for custom business rules. The new features will help organizations greatly enhance their CRM, business intelligence and marketing programs by enabling the creation of a single, consolidated view for each customer across the enterprise. The introduction of Firstlogic's IQ Suite was made at The Data Warehousing Institute's World Conference 2001, currently taking place.

Firstlogic's IQ Suite enables businesses to cleanse, enhance and match data anywhere it is touched, stored or moved, linking multiple customer touch points across the enterprise with inventory, financial, or other operational systems information. It is designed for B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-customer) records and handles customer as well as other business information crucial to gaining a full customer profile. Firstlogic's IQ Suite identifies matching records based on user selected criteria, using sophisticated adjustable matching techniques in its search for matching consumer and business records.

According to a recent Gartner Inc study, although enterprises expend a large amount of time and money locating, extracting and moving data distilled from multiple operational systems, they frequently overlook the critical task of identifying and correcting data quality issues. The study found that at least 50 percent of enterprises undertaking a CRM strategy are unaware of data quality problems in their environment, with the remainder recognizing the existence of data quality problems but doing little about it because of a lack of perceived value by management. "Bad data leads to bad business decisions," said Ted Friedman, research analyst, Gartner Inc. "Often, insights gained from BI tools and applications result in less than optimal business decisions being made. Enterprises deploying business intelligence solutions must be 'paranoid' about potential data quality issues and fanatical about finding and fixing them," he said.

Expanded Data Element Support; Extended Matching Capabilities

New to Information Quality Suite is the ability to apply multiple sets of match criteria as well as distinct sets of user defined match rules to compare data-rules such as name and address or user defined such as account number or e-mail address. This advanced matching enables users to set up and run multiple jobs with multiple matching criteria in a single pass for tuning or data comparison purposes. This helps create a single customer view, allows the user to perform a finer, more flexible search for matches in any database and allows for more meaningful relationship analysis of the data. In addition, multiple business rules can be set at different levels for a more granular view of the data as well as the same level in order to create a broader view of the data.

The IQ Suite enables organizations to identify, cleanse, match and consolidate not only conventional name and address data, but also a wide variety of customer and business data elements such as email addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, dates, part numbers, and virtually any customized user defined patterns. Using more accurate information and business rules, companies can easily eliminate duplicate records and consolidate all information about individual customers or an entire household, enabling organizations to leverage multiple data sources for their analysis or operational processes. Ensuring that records are complete and accurate enables companies to produce more effective targeted marketing campaigns, provide better customer service and make better informed business decisions.

The Firstlogic IQ Suite also enables one-pass processing, which not only significantly decreases processing time, but also allows a user to set up multiple levels within a single job simultaneously, each defined in a way that is increasingly more strict. For example, users could group records within a firm level using address elements, then at a department level using department names, and finally at the individual level using name or title data -- all in a single pass.

Agilent Cleans Up B2B Database

Agilent Technologies Inc, headquartered in Palo Alto, Calif., uses Firstlogic's Information Quality suite to cleanse, standardize, enhance, and match the information in its Oracle 8.0.5 B2B database, which runs on a multiprocessor HP9000 Series system being fed by a number of transaction systems located around the world. The Oracle customer information system, which currently supports about 3,000 users, is being used in parallel along with Agilent's legacy system, which will be phased out in the spring.

"Using Firstlogic's Information Quality Suite, we were able to institute much more robust matching routines, which enabled us to eliminate a considerable amount of duplication," said Priscilla Broberg, an Agilent IT consultant who specializes in customer information systems. "We have developed a powerful system that we are now more quickly populating with high quality data, resulting in better decision making," she said.

"Information quality is crucial in platform conversion, consolidation of legacy and external data, customer relationship management implementations and business intelligence applications," said Firstlogic president Eric Lieberman. "The 'heart' of any information quality process is the ability to create insightful relationships within your data that can be used to drive profitable business decisions. Firstlogic's IQ Suite has the ability to match, consolidate, associate, and identify data elements being entered into these applications will maximize the return on investment for any company."

Added Chris Colbert, Firstlogic's director, industry marketing, "Creating a single record view is key to the success of any customer relationship management, business intelligence, enterprise or middleware application. Without robust data parsing and normalization, any downstream processes -- such as matching and consolidation-either produce low quality results or fail outright," Colbert said. "Data normalization gives the customer assurance of soundness in queries, analyses, and business decisions that in any way depend on customer data."

About Firstlogic

Firstlogic specializes in enterprise-wide information quality solutions and services for e-business, data warehousing, and print and mail applications. Historically known for its popular software brands, i.d.Centric and Postalsoft, Firstlogic is now recognized as the leading global provider of information quality tools that enhance and match business-critical information anywhere it is touched, stored, or moved across the enterprise. In addition to developing commercial solutions, Firstlogic partners with many systems integrators, consultants, and original equipment manufacturers to provide its unique technology to their end-user customers. Founded in 1984, Firstlogic today serves thousands of customers worldwide, including Fortune 1000 companies in the e-business, financial, insurance, healthcare, direct marketing, higher education, and telecommunications markets. For more information, visit the company's Web site at www.firstlogic.com.

Contact Scott Humphrey of Humphrey Strategic Communications, 503-644-9709, humphrey@strategic-pr.com, for Firstlogic Inc.