Datawatch Report Management System Produces Positive ROI Within One Year for Allied Irish Bank International Financial Services.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

LOWELL, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 26, 2004

Datawatch|ES Web-Based Reporting and Analysis Implemented

for AIBIFS' Critical, Data-Driven Systems

Datawatch Corporation (NASDAQ: DWCH), a leading provider of report management, data transformation and service management solutions, today announced a first-year ROI exceeding 100 percent for the Datawatch|ES enterprise reporting system implementation at Allied Irish Bank International Financial Services (AIBIFS). AIBIFS is a company within the Investment Banking Division of Allied Irish Banks, p.l.c., Ireland's leading banking and financial services organization. For AIBIFS, Datawatch|ES is the ideal report management solution in an industry with critical requirements for secure, enterprise-wide reporting and ongoing analysis of complex data.

"Certain industries are data driven, and generate vast amounts of data for operations - financial services and banking in particular. For this reason, the reporting and analysis technology they require is as critical as the security, operational and storage systems they use. Datawatch|ES is a perfect fit for such environments, and that's why AIBIFS selected our system," said Claude Reeves, Datawatch vice president, Enterprise Applications. "Datawatch|ES helps AIBIFS efficiently run its business by enabling staff and institutional clients to securely share reports and analyze report data in the familiar browser environment. Such Web-based reporting and data mining delivers the ease of use, cost savings, functionality and processing power long associated with Datawatch technologies."

Datawatch|ES fully leverages legacy mainframe applications, industry-specific applications, and ERP/SCM solutions that organizations have already implemented and invested in. With Datawatch|ES, users no longer need their own connection or "seat" to these systems to directly run reports or access data. Users instead securely access the Datawatch|ES archive to access reports, the data within those reports, or output rendered as an XML form, via the Web.

"When we were reviewing enterprise reporting systems, Datawatch|ES scored higher than any of the others because of the analytics available, as well as the fact that you could see how Datawatch had moved the product forward," said Terry Leech, head of Information Technology at AIBIFS. "We were specifically impressed with features such as the direct links into Excel that the standard Datawatch|ES delivered. That alone stopped us having to do customized extracts. And because it is built on top of Datawatch's Monarch desktop reporting application, which we had been using and had been very comfortable with, we could just run with it."

Over the past year, AIBIFS achieved positive ROI through printing, faxing and hard copy archive savings alone. With Datawatch|ES electronic reporting, AIBIFS no longer uses 20 laser and two line printers full time for printing reports, doesn't have to ship hundreds of archive boxes to the warehouse each year, and isn't faxing the same 50-page reports to several international numbers for its clients.

ABOUT DATAWATCH|ES

Information Made Easy(TM) is the mission of Datawatch|ES, which offers a unique approach to reporting, business intelligence, and forms management in a single Web-based system. Datawatch|ES begins by transforming existing reports into a Web-enabled archive, for easy storage and paperless distribution of reports, reducing enterprise printing costs significantly. Datawatch|ES then automatically transforms report-based information into live online data for easy analysis and decision support in many formats, including HTML, PDF, Excel, and even multidimensional data cubes. In addition, any text-based output can be transformed into live XML forms without requiring XML programming.

Utilizing advanced, proven Web technologies to provide robust scalability, Datawatch|ES is capable of supporting tens of thousands of end users. Datawatch|ES also offers a totally Web-based administration interface, to manage all aspects of Datawatch|ES from any location, using a standard Web browser.

ABOUT AIBIFS

Founded in 1988, AIBIFS has worked with clients from 25 countries worldwide. We currently provide services to over 170 international clients including many of the world's leading corporations and financial institutions. Headquartered in the International Financial Services Centre in Dublin, we also have sister operations in Budapest and Zurich. This gives us a substantial presence in each of the top three European centres chosen by corporates when establishing centralised treasury, financing, international trading and intellectual property operations. Provision of a pan-European service to our clients is further enhanced by our ability to offer services from London, Luxembourg and Iceland. Many of our customers have established operations in several centres, comfortable in the knowledge that they will receive a seamless service from a single provider.

AIBIFS is a company within the Investment Banking Division of Allied Irish Banks, p.l.c. and is regulated by the Irish Financial Services Regulatory Authority under the Investment Intermediaries Act, 1995.

ABOUT DATAWATCH CORPORATION

Datawatch Corporation helps organizations easily access, store, distribute, transform and analyze information throughout the enterprise. From report management and analytics to data transformation and Internet presentment, Datawatch Corporation provides solutions that allow organizations to fully integrate and leverage their existing sources of information. Datawatch products are used in more than 20,000 companies, institutions and government agencies worldwide.