Comshare's E-Business Application for Management Planning and Control Now Available for IBM DB2 Universal Database.

Business Editors & High Tech Writers

ANN ARBOR, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 10, 2000

Web-architected Comshare BudgetPLUS 3.2 Supports Relational Database 

from the World's Database Market Share Leader

Comshare(R) Inc. announced today that version 3.2 of Comshare BudgetPLUS(TM) -- the company's e-business solution for management planning and control -- now supports IBM DB2 Universal Database (UDB) version 6.1. With this release of BudgetPLUS, which has been available since December 31, 1999, Comshare met its goal for the product to work on the world's top relational and multidimensional databases. BudgetPLUS is fully Web-architected and already runs on IBM DB2 OLAP Server, supporting an NT environment. Comshare is the leading provider of e-business software applications for management planning and control (MPC), which includes planning, budgeting, financial consolidation, management reporting and analysis.

"IBM's support for making BudgetPLUS operational on DB2 Universal Database has been outstanding," said Dennis Ganster, Comshare president and CEO. "The combination of IBM and Comshare technologies, especially those for the Web, allows fast and secure access to data through any network structure, offers excellent scalability for growing enterprises, and provides superior analysis to turn data into meaningful information for better decision-making based on strategic and operational plans. In short, BudgetPLUS on DB2 Universal Database offers companies an extremely powerful solution for more effective management planning and control."

"Comshare's efforts with IBM have allowed them to develop and bring to market a performance-driven e-business product that is seamlessly integrated with DB2 Universal Database," said Jim Kelly, vice president of marketing, IBM Data Management Solutions. "The mutual use of Web technology and the world class data handling inherent in DB2 Universal Database will empower our mutual customers worldwide for quicker decision making and more effective control of operations."

Comshare BudgetPLUS works seamlessly with IBM DB2 Universal Database, which is a powerful Web-ready, multimedia relational database management system. BudgetPLUS is fully Web-architected and comes "Ready-to-Go" with built-in best practices for planning, budgeting, management reporting and analysis. BudgetPLUS features built-in financial intelligence that make it richer in function and faster and easier to implement. And, BudgetPLUS is highly scalable and can be implemented using Web, client/server, or an optimal mix of both technologies. Comshare BudgetPLUS is an integrated e-business planning, budgeting, reporting and analysis application that improves productivity, shortens the budgeting cycle, and enhances the quality and usability of planning information. Unlike spreadsheets, BudgetPLUS manages and controls the entire MPC system, cutting the time and effort needed to complete individual planning, budgeting, reporting and analysis cycles.

About DB2 Universal Database

As the foundation for e-business, DB2 Universal Database is the industry's first multimedia, Web-ready relational database management system, strong enough to meet the demands of large corporations and flexible enough to serve medium-sized and small businesses. DB2 Universal Database combines power for business intelligence (data warehousing and data mining) with industry-leading performance and reliability to drive the most demanding industry solutions. DB2 Universal Database together with Internet technology makes information easily accessible, available and secure. With more than one million DB2 server licenses and 40 million users, IBM is the market-share leader in the worldwide database industry according to Dataquest Inc., a unit of GartnerGroup, Inc. More information on IBM data management can be found at http://www.software.ibm.com/data.

About Comshare

Comshare(R) Inc. (Nasdaq:CSRE) is the leading provider of e-business software applications for management planning and control (MPC), which includes planning, budgeting, financial consolidation, management reporting and analysis. Comshare's MPC applications deliver business-critical information over the Web that can be used to make sound planning and management decisions. In business for nearly 35 years, Comshare is one of the top independent software companies, with customers around the world, many of which are Fortune 500 and Financial Times Top 1000 companies. Comshare is an IBM Business Partner for software development. For more information on Comshare, call 1-800-922-7979, send e-mail to [e-mail] or visit Comshare's Web site at www.comshare.com.

Comshare(R) is a registered trademark of Comshare Inc. Comshare BudgetPLUS(TM) is a trademark of Comshare Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.