Cognizant to Retool ACE Hardware's Inventory Tracking System.

Business Editors

TEANECK, N.J.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 9, 2000

"This Could Have Been a Crippling Project Had It Not Been For

Cognizant"

Cognizant Technology Solutions Corp. (Nasdaq:CTSH), an e-business and application management solution provider, is contributing to ACE Hardware's 5,100 independent dealers' continued retail success by providing application re-engineering services that will result in a more accessible and a more responsive inventory tracking system. Specifically, Cognizant will expand the UPC/EAN code in all of ACE's wholesale systems. Cognizant is listed by Forbes as the "Best Small Company in America," and by BusinessWeek as the top solutions provider in its list of the top 100 Hot Growth Companies.

Cognizant will take on the substantial challenge of re-engineering hundreds of programs in a large mass change project to enable ACE Hardware to scale in order to meet rapidly growing retail demand. Cognizant's offshore retail center of expertise handles the needs of large retailers such as ACE by creating large scale delivery capabilities, centralizing the knowledge and applying the tools that help automate and streamline the process of delivering large projects.

"The reality is, unless we can find new ways to increase our IT production bandwidth and get more concurrent work moving through the pipeline, it will be very difficult for us to respond rapidly to changing business requirements," said Jay Heubner, ACE Hardware's manager of corporate IT application development and support. "Cognizant is serving as ACE's outsourcing partner and is providing us with the IT infrastructure improvements that we need to stay ahead of the game. This could have been a crippling project had it not been for Cognizant. Without its help, I would have had a significant percentage of my internal staff dedicated to this project for the foreseeable future. That would have made it even more challenging to get to market quickly with other mission-critical applications linked to our `Vision 21' strategic plan."

"ACE Hardware's inventory re-engineering requirements, which involves re-tooling large, mission-critical production applications, shows the beauty of outsourcing with Cognizant," said Kumar Mahadeva, Cognizant's chairman and CEO. "ACE was facing a huge amount of costly work that was beyond what could be provided by their internal teams alone. By outsourcing the project to Cognizant, ACE realized significant cost savings and more importantly, the end result will provide them with additional business value. They are receiving the value of our expertise and tool sets. We often see application management solutions non-specialists often overlook."

"What Cognizant brought in here and unleashed on our system was very advanced, and it resulted in knowledge transfer as well," said Heubner. "Our initial attraction to Cognizant was price because of its ability to leverage its on-site/offshore outsourcing model. What quickly became even more impressive was its peoples' knowledge and tool sets. If this initial relationship works out as well as we believe it will, there's a good possibility we'll extend the mission of the offshore development center to include other projects."

About Cognizant Technology Solutions

Cognizant delivers high-quality, cost-effective, full life-cycle solutions to complex software development and management problems. Cognizant employs more than 2,400 computer science and engineering professionals globally and at its eight development centers in India. The company specializes in e-business and application management. Cognizant has been assessed at SEI/CMM Level 4 and is ISO 9001 certified across all of its development centers. Based on sustained revenue and earnings growth, Forbes magazine named Cognizant the best small company in its listing of the "200 Best Small Companies." For more information, visit Cognizant on the Web at http://www.cognizant.com.

Cognizant's e-business solutions are facilitated by its on-site/offshore SEI/CMM Level 4 service delivery model, enabling project managers and technical architects at the client's location to communicate with programmers in India, and undertake development and management. The model provides a unique combination of the skills, quality, R&D capability, and 24x7 service required to create integrated e-business systems fast, and in a cost-effective manner. Cognizant's knowledge of EAI, data warehouse and Web-to-legacy integration, domain topology, and e-business application management, helps it to specialize in integrating e-business apps with existing IT systems.

About ACE Hardware

A Fortune 500 company, Oak Brook, Ill.-based ACE Hardware Corp. is a dealer-owned cooperative comprised of more than 5,100 independent ACE Hardware, home center, lumber and building materials retailers in all 50 states, and in 65 countries worldwide. ACE's 1999 wholesale sales reached $3.18 billion and retail sales topped $14 billion. ACE has 18 distribution centers located across North America , including two in Canada operated by ACE Hardware Canada Limited, a subsidiary of ACE.

ACE is committed to providing low upfront costs on merchandise purchases by ACE dealers from strategically located ACE Hardware retail support centers or through ACE's drop ship and bulletin programs. Dealers are supported by over 65,000 brand name and ACE Brand items, a comprehensive advertising program, sophisticated retail support systems, and headquarters and field staff personnel. Independent market research indicates that over the last four years, eight out of every 10 American consumers know ACE as the "Helpful Hardware Place."

This press release includes statements which may constitute forward-looking statements made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Although Cognizant believes the expectations contained in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations will prove correct. These statements may involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the expected results. Such risks include, but are not limited to, the risk factors described in Cognizant's Registration Statement on Form S-1 and in other reports and periodic filings made from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission.