Ardent Software Signs Italian Distribution Partner for Data Warehouse Offerings.

WESTBORO, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 10, 1999--

DATAMAT Delivers Full Set of Ardent Data Warehousing Products to Italy

Ardent Software, Inc. (Nasdaq:ARDT), a leading global data management software company, today announced that DATAMAT, a leading Italian provider of information technology, will be the exclusive distributor in Italy for DataStage(R), Ardent's extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) tool, and MetaBrokers(tm), the company's component software for meta data exchange. Currently, DATAMAT is the exclusive distributor in Italy for Ardent's other data management tools, Ardent Warehouse Executive Suite(tm) and Ardent Quality Manager(tm). The deal, following closely on the heels of the April 27th announcement that DataStage will support Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Thai languages, strengthens Ardent's position as a global leader in providing data warehousing and information management tools.

"By partnering with a former Prism vendor such as DATAMAT for the distribution of our DataStage and MetaBrokers products, Ardent continues to leverage the synergies from its recent acquisition of Prism Solutions. This agreement enables Ardent to meet global marketing demands through strong, established channels," said Peter Fiore, vice president and general manager of Ardent's Data Warehouse Business Unit. "Selecting tools that successfully manage the complexities associated with integrating large amounts of corporate data generated from world-wide sources is crucial to the success of large-scale data warehousing projects in multi-national companies. Ardent's DataStage simplifies widespread development and deployment of information systems, saving time and resources throughout the data warehouse lifecycle."

DATAMAT, established in 1971, is a leading Italian provider of information technology solutions. The company operates in the sectors of systems integration, consulting, application development products, and software for the banking and finance, public administration, telecommunications, aerospace, and defense verticals.

"Ardent's European presence played a significant role in entering this partnership. As a leading provider of IT solutions, we want to be sure that we partner with a company that has the European resources to back its products in Italy," said Paolo Brunelli, business manager, data warehouse products, DATAMAT. "As a data warehouse tool vendor, we are delighted to begin a relationship with Ardent, a company with a clear strategic vision of the evolution of information technology, combined with a strong, comprehensive product line."

Ardent in Data Warehousing

Ardent Software's integrated data warehouse development and management tools and services streamline the design and implementation of data warehouses and data marts for the enterprise. Ardent's DataStage, Quality Manager, and Warehouse Executive tools provide scalable, flexible, cost-effective data warehousing solutions for many of the world's leading companies. Ardent's data warehousing tools facilitate mainframe data migration, data cleansing, data transformation, meta data management, and ERP solutions.

About Ardent and Prism

On Monday, April 26, 1999, Ardent announced the completion of its acquisition of data warehousing pioneer Prism Solutions. By acquiring Prism, Ardent has nearly doubled its data warehouse sales force to approximately 110, gained over 400 blue-chip customers, expanded its capabilities in the extraction and transformation of mainframe data, added SAP warehouse interfaces, and increased its European and Asian presence. Ardent Software now offers one of the industry's broadest and most comprehensive sets of data warehousing tools and services across mainframe, UNIX, and Windows NT platforms.

About Ardent Software

Ardent Software is a leading global data management software company. Ardent develops and markets embedded databases and software tools for enterprise-scale applications and data warehouses. With worldwide sales and service operations, and 1,000 resellers in more than 50 countries, Ardent is one of the top software companies in the world. More than 60,000 customers and 2.2 million users in virtually every aspect of business and government use applications powered by Ardent's products and technologies to solve their complex data management problems. Ardent is headquartered in Westboro, Massachusetts. The company's common stock trades on the Nasdaq National Market under the symbol "ARDT." For more information, visit Ardent's web site at www.ardentsoftware.com.

Statements expressing the beliefs and expectations of management regarding future performance are forward-looking and involve risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, quarterly fluctuations in results and other risks. These risks are detailed from time to time in the Company's Securities and Exchange Commission filings, including the Company's Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 1998. Actual results may differ materially from management's expectations.

DataStage, Iterations, O2 Technology, Prism, RedBack, System Builder, UniData, UniVerse and wIntegrate are registered trademarks of Ardent Software, Inc. Other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of the respective trademark holders.