Ascential Software Delivers on Information Asset Management Strategy with Customer Wins - Expands to More Than 1500 Customers Worldwide.

Business/Technology Editors

WESTBORO, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 27, 2001

Broad product portfolio and superior customer service drive demand

for Ascential's Information Asset Management platform

Ascential(TM) Software, Inc., today announced signing more than 150 new customers in the fourth quarter of 2000, demonstrating the rapidly growing acceptance of Information Asset Management as a mission-critical strategy for large enterprises. Ascential's installed base now exceeds 1500 customers, including recent addition of Northwest Airlines, Shell Retail, Novo Nordisk, Agip Petroli, and Fleet Financial. Various customers cited Ascential's breadth of products and strong sales and support organizations as key decision factors.

Ascential intends to become the industry leader in the emerging market with Information Asset Management solutions - products and services that allow customers to reduce costs, improve profitability and increase customer-centricity by transforming disparate data and content enterprise-wide into reusable strategic information assets. The company plans to leverage its highly differentiated product and service offerings, global field organization of more than 600 sales and service professionals, and strategic alliances to deliver on its Information Asset Management strategy. Ascential is an independent operating company of Informix(R) Corporation.

"We chose Ascential based on its overall solution for our data integration needs, offering mainframe data access, meta data capabilities, and data quality capabilities," said Mary Sweeney, data warehouse architect of Northwest Airlines. "Overall, the Ascential solution provided flexibility and scalability that will enable us to expand to the enterprise level."

"Ascential's continued success can be directly linked to product leadership and customer focus," said Pete Fiore, president, Ascential Software. "We have a unique ability to integrate, manage and deliver information from the widest range of corporate information sources - such as Internet transactions, media content and mainframe data - transforming unrefined data and content into meaningful, reliable information assets."

At the core of its Information Asset Management strategy, Ascential is focusing on four main product areas to help its customers solve the most complex information management challenges:

--DataStage(R) XE performs the vital functions necessary to extract, transform and integrate structured and unstructured data from a wide variety of sources and systems into data warehouses, data marts, e-analytic applications, and between B2B applications, providing comprehensive meta data management and data quality assurance capabilities;

--Axielle(TM) provides a second-generation enterprise-wide portal solution for managing and delivering enterprise information via the web, and is the first portal solution to integrate with an enterprise's information infrastructure;

--Media360(TM)is a complete solution for collecting, digitizing, managing, re-using and distributing a wide range of media assets;

--i.Decide(TM) represents a family of customer-centric analytic components, leveraging Ascential's industry-leading data integration platform and both horizontal and vertical data models to reduce time to deployment for e-analytic applications;

"Organizations today understand the strategic value of their data. But, harnessing all of it to realize its value can be a daunting task because the data is implemented in so many ways and stored in so many systems," said Mitch Kramer, senior consultant and analyst for Patricia Seybold Group. "Ascential's Information Asset Management strategy is designed specifically to address requirements for harnessing this data. This strategy is implemented by products that have the capabilities to reach all the data (and content) throughout the organization; that can create and manage meta data about all this data, thereby allowing its management; and that provide the mechanisms to access, move, and integrate it, the data can then be leveraged and its value realized by all of an organization's users and applications."

"The explosion of interest in Ascential's Information Asset Management solutions is really a validation of our on-going commitment to our customers. When we compete head-to-head with other vendors in the market, we win because of product superiority and service delivery. Our domination of the market is based on creating real value for customers to help them achieve optimum return on their enterprise information assets," said Fiore.

About Ascential

Ascential Software, Inc. is the 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, Mass., Ascential has offices worldwide and supports more than 1500 customers, including Fujitsu-Siemens, Deutsche Bank, Pfizer, BizRate, SC Johnson, France Telecom, the British Broadcasting Corporation, and Subaru of America, Inc., in such industries as telecommunications, insurance, financial services, healthcare, media/entertainment and retail. Ascential is an independent operating company of Informix Corporation (NASDAQ: IFMX) and can be found on the Web at www.ascentialsoftware.com.

Safe Harbor Statement

Public Announcement - Ascential's New Customers

2/27/2001

This public announcement contains forward-looking statements, which are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements include those as to:

--Whether customers will continue to accept Information Asset Management as a mission-critical strategy for large enterprises

--Whether customers will continue to consider Ascential's products and sales and support organizations as decision factors in choosing enterprise software

--Whether Ascential will be able to become the industry leader in the Information Asset Management market

--Whether Ascential will be able to leverage its product and service offerings, global field organization and strategic alliances to deliver on its Information Asset Management strategy

--Whether Ascential can maintain product leadership and customer focus to enable continued success

Any statements that are not statements of historical fact should be considered forward-looking statements as a result of certain risks and uncertainties. These risks and uncertainties could cause actual results and events to differ materially from historical or anticipated results and events. Investors and potential investors should review carefully the description of the risks and uncertainties, which, together with other detailed information about Informix Corporation, is contained in the periodic reports that Informix Corporation files from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

This public announcement contains information that is accurate as of February 27, 2001, the date of the public announcement. The company disclaims any obligation to update or correct the information as a result of financial, business or any other developments occurring after February 27, 2001.

(c)2001 Ascential Software, Inc. All rights reserved. Ascential is a trademark of Ascential Software, Inc. and may be registered in other jurisdictions. The following are trademarks of Informix Corporation or its affiliates, one or more of which may be registered in the U.S. or other jurisdictions: Informix(R), DataStage(R), Media360(TM), Axielle(TM)and i.Decide(TM).