Building a Better Enterprise by Managing Data Integration; ETI's Enhanced Software Enables E-commerce and Application Integration.

Business Editors & High-Tech Writers

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 18, 2000

Evolutionary Technologies International Inc. (ETI) today released ETI-EXTRACT(R) 4.1 with enhancements to help organizations integrate e-commerce with their back-office and decision support applications.

Long-recognized for its ability to automate the generation and maintenance of interfaces to legacy systems such as IMS and COBOL VSAM, ETI-EXTRACT 4.1 offers the ability to generate code that interfaces to message systems such as IBM's MQSeries for the near real-time data exchange between applications required to support e-customers.

"As the number and size of mergers and acquisitions continues to increase in an effort to speed globalization and adapt to the deregulation of industries such as banking and telecom, data integration is requiring a staggering amount of the IT budget," said Dr. Katherine Hammer, co-founder, president & CEO of ETI, who cites industry analysts that estimate the cost of handcoding these interfaces exceeded $100 billion in 1999. "The problem will only be compounded as companies try to integrate their e-commerce applications. ETI's goal is to provide its customers with a means of containing and managing this process."

Enhancements in release 4.1 include the ability to control user access to objects in the MetaStore(tm), ETI's internal repository, as well as improved capabilities for exchanging information across multiple MetaStores. In this way, system administrators can provide security levels that keep, for example, contractors installing an e-application from knowing any more about the organization's databases and data warehouses than what they need to get the job done. ETI-EXTRACT also retains a metadata audit trail of what was done in installing and integrating any application so that organizations can quickly determine the impact of any proposed change.

In addition, significant improvements have been made to make ETI-EXTRACT easier to use and administer. Usability enhancements decrease the number of keystrokes required for common tasks. These changes contribute to overall productivity gains.

"ETI-EXTRACT is the only product currently available that can help manage all of a company's data integration needs, whether batch, legacy, near real-time, or clickstream," said David Marshall, ETI's chief technical officer and senior vice president of development. "Customers frequently report a 3-to-1 or 4-to-1 improvement in cost and time on their first project, only to increase those savings estimates by ten times after using the product over a period of time and range of projects."

ETI was one of the founders of the Meta Data Coalition. In that capacity, ETI is committed to working with software vendors such as Microsoft, NCR, SAS, Ardent (now Informix), Informatica and PricewaterhouseCoopers to define and adopt a standard for metadata interchange to facilitate application integration across the enterprise.

About ETI

ETI's enterprise data integration management products are used by Fortune 1000 companies around the world to reduce costs and time while improving quality in projects such as ERP implementation, data consolidation and data warehouse development. Founded in January 1991, ETI was the first company to spin off from the MCC research consortium in Austin, Texas. ETI has regional offices in major U.S. cities and business operations in Europe, Canada and Australia.

ETI is recognized as an outstanding firm with an innovative product with awards such as an AA rating three-years running on the Crossroads A-List awards, two listings in the top 20 of the Inc. Magazine "500 Fastest Growing Companies" list and a listing on Computerworld's "100 Hot Emerging Companies" list. For more information on ETI, visit www.eti.com or call ETI's U.S. headquarters at 800/856-8800.

Evolutionary Technologies International, the ETI logo and ETI-EXTRACT are trademarks or registered trademarks of Evolutionary Technologies International Inc.

All other product or service names mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective companies.

NOTE TO EDITORS: In the terms "ETI-EXTRACT" the hyphen replaces a bullet. The hyphen was used for transmission purposes only.