3Com Implements Worldwide Decision Support System Standardized on Informatica Software

Informatica Corporation has announced that 3Com Corporation has used Informatica's PowerCenter and PowerMart to build and deploy a large-scale corporate data warehouse which consolidates data from across 3Com's global enterprise for strategic business analysis. In parallel production since May, 3Com's "Wisdom Enterprise Data Warehouse" delivers critical business information from both site and regional operations to 1,000 users across all levels of 3Com's worldwide organization where business decisions are made affecting the finance, sales and manufacturing organizations.

"A critical success factor for companies operating in today's highly competitive and volatile business environment is their intelligent use of corporate information assets to create and lead industry trends and maximize internal efficiency," said Ari Bose, director of architecture, strategy and information systems at 3Com. "Since the successful roll-out of our Wisdom Enterprise Data Warehouse, 3Com is now realizing the tremendous benefits that come from conducting true enterprise decision support."

Following significant corporate growth over the past five years and a merger with USR in 1997, 3Com recognized last year that its previously fragmented environment for conducting business analysis was no longer adequate to support the company's dynamic global business model. The company's operating units continued to generate large amounts of valuable transactional data that were inaccessible to key decision-makers across the company without an underlying architecture in place to consolidate the data for analysis.

Since its rollout of the Wisdom data warehouse, however, 3Com has overcome these problems and is realizing the following benefits:

• Improved sales performance -- By pulling customer-order data from 3Com's data warehouse, the company is able to produce daily reports monitoring its order and shipment activity. This permits the real-time comparison of daily results to budgeted and historical results going back over several years. This timely information permits 3Com to analyze and adjust its sales strategies on an ongoing basis, enabling a stronger market response and positively impacting core earnings.
• Decreased cost of ownership -- With its new centralized data-management architecture, 3Com's data warehouse simplifies the overall information-management infrastructure, providing optimal cost of ownership.
• Streamlined, more efficient business processes -- Due to the various subsystems now in place that enable data reconciliation, the company is able to streamline business processes while maintaining data integrity. More efficient business processes ultimately reduce the need for additional resources, such as staff and software.
• Improved customer relationship management -- With the new data warehouse in place, sales data is readily available to the entire sales force which, in turn, helps it manage customer relationships more effectively.
• Reduced IT development -- Enforcement of standardized data definitions provides great value in standardizing measurements and reporting elements across the company. The data model also helps define business processes and reduces the time it takes to establish technical and business requirement parameters for future projects.

"High-tech companies like 3Com operate within such a competitive, fast-changing environment that near real-time analysis of operational data is critical to making strategic business decisions that impact the direction of the company," said Diaz Nesamoney, president of Informatica. "3Com illustrates how enterprise-class decision-support solutions can help technology companies stay nimble in this environment by providing accurate, timely information they can immediately analyze and act upon."

Other high-tech companies that have chosen Informatica's data-integration platform to build enterprise and line-of-business data warehousing applications include AMD, Autodesk, BETA Systems, CompuServe, Exabyte, Hewlett-Packard, Honeywell, IBM, Informix, Interactive Media Corporation, LSI Logic, Macromedia, Microsoft, National Semiconductor, NCR, Netcentives, NetGravity, Netscape, Network Solutions, Prodigy, SGI (formerly Silicon Graphics), Sybase, UUNET and Western Digital.

Informatica's PowerCenter is an enterprise data-integration hub that enables organizations to easily transform legacy, relational and ERP data into reliable information for strategic business analysis. PowerMart is an integrated tool suite for designing, deploying, managing and maintaining line-of-business data marts and analytic applications. Together, they deliver a robust platform for building and managing an enterprise decision support system.

3Com Corporation is one of the world's leading suppliers of data, voice and video communications technology. The company has delivered networking solutions to more than 200 million customers worldwide, providing businesses, consumers, carriers and network-service providers with comprehensive solutions for building intelligent, high-performance local and wide area networks. Annual revenues for 3Com's current fiscal year are estimated at greater than $6 billion.

About Informatica

Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, Informatica develops and markets enterprise software products and services that enable many of the world's largest companies to build and manage business intelligence and analytic applications across the enterprise. Informatica has more than 480 Global 2000 customers worldwide and maintains partnerships with Cambridge Technology Partners, EDS, Ernst & Young, Microsoft, PeopleSoft, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, SAP AG and Siemens Business Services. For more information, call 800-653-3871, or visit Informatica's Web site at http://www.informatica.com.