IBM Forges Alliances with Data Warehousing Vendors

SOMERS, N.Y., October 18, 1995 . . . For an enterprise looking to create an
effective data warehouse, one of the major obstacles is integrating
products and technologies from different vendors. Today, IBM took direct
aim at solving that problem by announcing five strategic, in-depth
cooperative alliances with producers of industry-leading data warehouse
products.

"Customers today ask for tighter integration of products and technologies
from different vendors," said Tim Negris, vice president, sales and
marketing, IBM Software Solutions Division. "By working closely with
several partners to design integrated data warehouse solutions, we will be
able to provide maximum value to our customers."

The newly formed alliances with Arbor Software, Business Objects,
Information Advantage, Pilot Software and Vality Technology focus on two
areas of data warehouse technology -- multidimensional analysis for
end-users, and ensuring the accuracy, quality and consistency of the data.
The alliances are designed to complement, and integrate with, IBM's data
warehouse products. Points of integration, available today, include:

 *   Integration of metadata in IBM's DataGuide product and
     ability to invoke applications from DataGuide.  DataGuide
     enables users to catalog business information and provides
     powerful search techniques based on keywords, values or
     types of information.  DataGuide has been extended with a
     generic data model of multidimensional structures to
     facilitate integration with multidimensional analysis
     products.

 *   Access to data stored in the DATABASE 2 (DB2) family of
     databases.  DB2 is scalable across a variety of IBM and
     non-IBM platforms, including OS/2, AIX, OS/400, MVS,
     VM, VSE, HP-UX, Sun Solaris and Siemens Nixdorf
     SINIX.

 *   Extension of the reach of vendor products to heterogeneous
     data sources with IBM's DataJoiner.  DataJoiner provides
     transparent access to data on a variety of data sources --
     both relational and non-relational -- from IBM and other
     vendors.

IBM also announced ongoing cooperative efforts with these alliance members
to further increase integration among their products and IBM's data
warehouse products. (In a related announcement, the company has teamed
with several leading providers of data warehouse consulting services.)

Arbor Software Corporation, located in Sunnyvale, Calif., provides a
multidimensional database, Essbase. The collaboration announced today will
enable data warehouse users to take advantage of Arbor's Essbase server
for extracting, accessing, and analyzing detailed DB2 data from multiple
dimensions.

Business Objects, Inc., headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., provides
client/server decision support tools that allow end-users to access
relational databases from their desktop. Through this IBM relationship,
Business Objects can extend its data access methods and key data analysis
features to DB2.

Located in Edina, Minn., Information Advantage, Inc. provides the
DecisionSuite product, an integrated set of decision support applications
designed to perform multidimensional analysis on relational databases. The
cooperative effort with IBM will enable users to access DB2 data through
Information Advantage's Application Server, as well as register and launch
DecisionSuite objects as they are browsing through specific
multidimensional structures.

Pilot Software, Inc., a company of Dun & Bradstreet, with headquarters in
Cambridge, Mass., produces the LightShip Server multidimensional database
product. The IBM/Pilot relationship enables customers to extract DB2 data,
as well as browse and analyze metadata.

Based in Boston, Mass., Vality Technology, Inc. provides a data
reengineering product, Integrity. The collaboration with IBM will allow
the two companies to deliver cleansed and consolidated data to data
warehouses and to provide rich descriptions of this data and its origin to
business users and data warehouse administrators.

This is an initial set of alliance members, and IBM will consider
additional vendors for the data warehouse program.

IBM's Software Solutions Division provides data management, application
development and workgroup solutions for mission-critical applications on
personal computers, workstations, LANs and host systems. For Internet
users, IBM offers complete information about the company, its products,
services and technology on the World Wide Web. The IBM home page is at
http://www.ibm.com. The fastest, easiest way to get information about IBM
software is to go to the IBM Software home page at
http://www.software.ibm.com.
 
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