Expanded Information Builders Sun Microsystems Partnership Brings Scalable Warehouse Solutions to End Users Enterprise-Wide; Partners Sign Worldwide Product Integration Agreement.

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 27, 1995--Information Builders, Inc. announced an expansion of its partnership with Sun Microsystems Computer Corporation to include endorsement and support of Sun's DecisionWarehouse program. The firm will also cooperate with Sun in bringing its enterprise client/server solutions expertise to help data warehouse architects and users to quickly and efficiently design, build, manage and analyze data stored anywhere in the organization.

In addition, Information Builders and Sun Integration Services recently signed a strategic agreement that allows Sun to provide Information Builders middleware and enterprise decision support products and solutions to customers worldwide who are moving to client/server technology. Both companies bring strong backgrounds in providing data warehouse and client/server solutions to their customers. It was that strength, combined with their commercial success in the decision support business, which led to the current agreement.

Information Builders is using Sun SMP computers as a base platform to develop optimized UNIX-based data warehouse implementations. Those solutions exploit SMP functionality by parallelizing data requests for dramatically improved query performance in complex OLAP environments. Information Builders plans to further exploit Sun's high performance architecture and systems software, offering state-of- the-art data warehousing products to be announced later this year.

"The Sun data warehouse solution offers a powerful suite of complementary technologies for helping organizations build and use data warehouses," said Dave Kemler, vice president, sales and marketing, Information Builders. "Information Builders provides a complete set of data warehousing products and services for Sun users. FOCUS, EDA/SQL, associated products, and the collective expertise of both companies should play a key role in any Sun data warehouse."

Data warehousing is emerging as an important tool for converting mountains of operational data into an easily accessible format that can be used to make faster, smarter marketing decisions," said Mark Tolliver vice president of strategy and business development at Sun Microsystems Computer Company. Our DecisionWarehouse program, announced today as part of Sun's Network Business Advantage, combines our own expertise and technology with that of industry - leading partners such as Information Builders, providing customers with a proven framework for building a data warehouse and getting the most out of it.

FOCUS, the leading corporate and government decision support software, and EDA/SQL, the de facto middleware standard, are two flagship products slated for data warehouse utilization with Sun technology. In addition, SmartMode and SiteAnalyzer, expert systems-based tools used in Information Builders data warehouse solutions, are being ported to the Sun environment from the mainframe and PC platforms.

From desktop to mainframe, FOCUS is the enterprise standard for business intelligence application development, reporting and information analysis. FOCUS allows customers to build complete information management systems which are interoperable on more than 35 computing platforms. More than one million users have benefited from its rapid application development tools, completely portable code, and robust reporting engine. It provides access to all major data structures and acts as a universal client application to any host server platform. FOCUS for Open Environments, available on the Sun platform, suports Sun's SMP technology with its Parallel Data Query (PDQ) functionality.

EDA/SQL extends the reach of virtually any application or tool that supports SQL for transparent access to 63 of the most widely used proprietary databases and files in 35 interconnected operating environments. EDA/SQL allows Sun customers to connect and integrate all in-place databases to Sun data warehouses.

Data Warehouse Design

Information Builders' SiteAnalyzer, used in the design phase of data warehouses, allows data warehouse architects to determine which databases should be considered for delivery into the data warehouse and helps identify changes in warehouse data requirements as the organization changes. SiteAnalyzer allows data warehouses to quickly provide tangible benefits to an organization and provides a comprehensive picture of the cost involved in moving an application to the data warehouse.

It provides detailed and quantifiable user data by measuring and monitoring all query activity. SiteAnalyzer will report which queries are used most often and which are no longer used. It can also determine whether particular fields are always summed, or often joined, and can identify high resource queries, providing direction toward performance tuning, database reorganization, user education and job scheduling. SiteAnalyzer can indicate high use and low use times for scheduling of maintenance and the new product also provides a log to verify usage in support of chargeback facilities. Currently available on the mainframe, SiteAnalyzer will be ported to the UNIX and other platforms this year.

Building and Managing Data Warehouses

Information Builders' EDA/Copy Manager is used in the building and updating of data warehouses. EDA/Copy Manager is a Motif-based utility which enables customers to copy data from any EDA/SQL-supported database or file into a variety of databases. Users identify the data to be copied, actions to be performed on the data and the database files targeted to receive the data. EDA/SQL Servers then retrieve the data and automatically load it into the specified database using high speed load facilities. EDA/Copy Manager can also execute applications on a repetitive basis utilizing a scheduling facility.

Analyzing Warehoused Data

Information Builders offers an integrated suite of graphical reporting and analysis tools which provide a powerful way for users to access and analyze FOCUS and other data sources.

The FOCUS Desktop Family of products includes FOCUS Reporter for Motif, as well as:

FOCUS Reporter for Windows FOCUS Professional

Business Intelligence Suite FOCUS/EIS

FOCUS Report Server FOCUS/Database Server

With FOCUS Reporter for Motif, end users, power users, and IS professionals can build queries and style attractively formatted or graphical reports. The underlying FOCUS language is optionally and instantly available for inspection, enhancements and changes allowing users to access FOCUS and other databases natively... through ODBC... or through EDA/SQL.

Information Builders Business Intelligence Suite (BIS), including WinViz and StatPak, helps deliver critical data to key decision makers. BIS is an integrated set of sophisticated analysis tools for data visualization and statistical analysis.

FOCUS/EIS allows executives to access data warehouses and drill down through successive levels of detail to obtain the information they need from wherever it resides. Information Builders, a privately held company, was incorporated in 1975 and ranks among the top independent software vendors in the world, with 1994 revenues of $243 million. FOCUS is the world's most widely installed 4GL/reporting tool for information systems with close to 8,000 installations and 1 million users worldwide. Information Builders also offers the EDA/SQL family of data access products, LEVEL5, an application development tool with expert systems capabilities, and a full range of educational and consulting services worldwide.

Sun Microsystems Computer Company (SMCC) is a world leader in design, manufacture and sale of network computing systems and is a division of Sun Microsystems, Inc. Recognized for quality and innovation, the company's SPARC workstation and multiprocessing servers each hold the No. 1 UNIX marketshare position. These systems are used primarily by businesses, educational institutions and governments worldwide for technical, commercial, industrial and software development applications. -0-

Trademarks: This press release refers to numerous products by their trade names. In most cases, these designations are claimed as trademarks or registered trademarks by their respective companies.

CONTACT: Pamela Haas

Larry Gordon

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