Cadence Joins TSANet to Provide Support for EDA Customers' Multi-Vendor Design Environments.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 2, 1999--

Cadence Enhances Value to Customers by Leveraging Existing IT Industry

Multi-Vendor Support Processes, Practices and Alliances

Cadence Design Systems, Inc. (NYSE:CDN), the world's leading provider of electronic design products and services, today announced its customer support group has joined the Technical Support Alliance Network (TSANet) to assist customers when interoperability issues arise between Cadence products and those from other software and hardware vendors.

Founded in 1993 with a core of 19 companies, TSANet provides a vendor-neutral environment for its members to deliver customer support.

Cadence is the first EDA company to join the not-for-profit TSANet, whose more than 100 members include such companies as Hewlett-Packard and IBM Corporation.

"TSANet provides its members with the infrastructure and tools to enable multi-vendor cooperative support," said Dan Rourke, director of Cadence customer support for North America. "Through our participation in TSANet, our customers will receive faster and more efficient resolution of problems. "In joining this organization Cadence raises the bar for the level of support throughout the EDA industry."

Cadence customers expect timely support for their Cadence software. While the Cadence customer support group can directly influence the quality of support received when design flows are made up entirely of Cadence tools, their ownership of the support processes is lessened when customers use flows that contain tools from third parties, Cadence Connections(R) partners, and/or competitors. This challenge will be alleviated by Cadence's membership in TSANet.

Working through TSANet, customers who come to Cadence with a support problem that involves one or more additional vendors will now be able to receive assistance much more easily. The Cadence support representative will immediately contact TSANet to obtain the appropriate contact for the other vendor(s), and the companies will then work together to resolve the problem quickly and efficiently. For more information on TSANet, visit http://www.tsanet.org.

About Cadence

Cadence is the largest supplier of electronic design automation products, methodology services, and design services used to accelerate and manage the design of a variety of electronics-based products. More information about the company, its products and services may be obtained from the World Wide Web at http://www.cadence.com.

Note to Editors: Cadence, the Cadence logo and Connections are registered trademarks of Cadence Design Systems, Inc. All others are properties of their respective holders.