Alterian Receives the Customer Service Leadership Award at the Frost & Sullivan Banquet.

FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Frost & Sullivan presented Alterian with the 2005 Customer Service Leadership Award at the Best Practices Awards Banquet on April 20, 2005 for the company's outstanding performance in the customer relationship management (CRM) analytics marketplace.

Every year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has demonstrated excellence in customer service within the industry. The award recognizes tremendous responsiveness to customer needs and continual focus on long- and short-term customer profitability goals. It also lauds the recipient company's demonstrated flexibility in tailoring its product offerings to suit customer businesses.

Alterian's business model is rather distinctive in that the solution delivery is exclusively through marketing service providers (MSPs), who thereby become Alterian's customers.

MSPs serve a wide range of end-user vertical markets, typically providing database marketing services. Alterian focuses on providing these MSPs a unique business relationship in addition to its software products and services.

MSPs constitute a sizeable downstream market for CRM analytics applications, especially in the North American market, and are increasingly seeking to evolve from commodity to value-based services. "A key driver for enabling the shift from being mere campaign execution engines to providers of consultative marketing services including strategy and planning, is their expertise in marketing and customer analytics," says Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Ashwin Iyer.

From a software solution standpoint, a key requirement for database marketers is increased empowerment of the business user and less reliance on IT and programming sophistication. Database marketers need easy-to-use, yet advanced tools for customer segmentation, data analysis, and campaign planning.

The nucleus of Alterian's software solution is a proprietary column-based database search and indexing technology that is designed to be able to process complex ad-hoc queries and deliver results back in seconds. Another feature allows the business user to apply the result of a particular query or analysis as the basis of the next one, and so on, thus providing a "train-of-thought" analysis.

The other applications in Alterian's solution include a visualization-led data exploration and modules for ad-hoc queries, modeling, reporting, and campaign management. These applications constitute the Alterian marketing suite, which provides an integrated marketing analytics solution for database marketers, presented through a single user interface.

Alterian offers flexible pricing and packaging models based on the specific needs of MSPs wherein they can choose to customize and manufacture Alterian's technology.

"Empowering MSPs with a stronger value proposition derived from a low TCO, high-value model certainly helps them serve end-user organizations more efficiently and effectively," notes Iyer. "End-user organizations can acquire Alterian's solution through the MSP partner network from a choice of models such as license purchase, on-site rental, or hosted/ ASP."

Over 45 MSPs use Alterian's solution worldwide, and in turn, deploy Alterian technology to over 165 end-user organizations, across a range of industries. A key highlight of Alterian's MSP customer base is a renewal rate of 96 percent in FY04, which validates Alterian's excellence in meeting the needs of its customers.

For its technology and business model that has all the ingredients needed to provide MSPs exceptional value and service for their business, Alterian receives the 2005 Customer Service Leadership Award.

"Alterian's Marketing and Customer Analytics technology and business model presents a compelling solution for Marketing Services Providers to move up the value chain of Marketing Services," concludes Ashwin Iyer.

Held in Fort Myers, Fla., the Frost & Sullivan banquet honors world-class companies for outstanding performance and achievements in their industries. An annual event, the banquet recognizes the quality and merit of distinguished individuals and companies.

About Alterian

Alterian (www.alterian.com) is a global provider of database marketing and customer insight solutions which enable businesses to improve the effectiveness of marketing activity through sophisticated customer insight. Alterian products are based on the Alterian Engine, which provides unrivaled performance, speed and scalability for large volumes of detailed data. Delivered via its network of over 40 business partners, Alterian's technology currently helps blue-chip organizations including, Merrill Lynch, Daily Telegraph, Premier Farnell, Amnesty International and Vodafone, to benefit from unparalleled actionable analysis of data. Alterian also powers solutions for leading Marketing Service Providers such as GB Group and Carlson Marketing. With international headquarters in the U.K. and four offices across North America, Alterian was founded in 1997 and is listed on the techMARK Index of the London Stock Exchange (ALN).

About Frost & Sullivan

Frost & Sullivan, a global growth consulting company, has been partnering with clients to support the development of innovative strategies for more than 40 years. The company's industry expertise integrates growth consulting, growth partnership services and corporate management training to identify and develop opportunities. Frost & Sullivan serves an extensive clientele that includes Global 1000 companies, emerging companies, and the investment community, by providing comprehensive industry coverage that reflects a unique global perspective and combines ongoing analysis of markets, technologies, econometrics, and demographics.