Innovative Partnership with Avellino Offers Organizations Comprehensive Data Integration Solution; Agreement Broadens Existing European Alliance Into a Global Partnership.

Business/Technology Editors

PITTSBURGH--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 21, 2001

Enterprise-class companies now have a comprehensive data integration solution that combines the data quality functionality of software from Innovative Systems, Inc. with the data analysis capability of Avellino Discovery(TM) from U.K.-based Avellino Technologies Ltd. Through its partnership with Avellino, Innovative is now marketing Discovery for use in conjunction with its own software.

Utilizing Discovery, Innovative's customers will gain a complete and accurate view of all their data before undertaking complex data migration and integration projects. This will allow them to identify and prevent potentially fatal data errors, drastically reducing project risks, costs and timeframes.

"According to a recent report by the Standish Group, 88 percent of major IT projects fail to deliver on time and within budget," said Bob Colonna, president and CEO, Innovative. "Two primary reasons for this high failure rate are related to data integration and data quality. By aligning ourselves with Avellino, we can provide our customers with an all-inclusive toolset that will help them proactively address these two issues and greatly improve their chances of successful implementations."

Through a cooperative marketing agreement recently reached by the two companies, Innovative will sell Discovery outside of the United Kingdom. This arrangement extends the existing European alliance between Avellino and Innovative. Under the current partnership, Avellino offers Innovative's products within its Avellino Approach(TM), a strategic end-to-end solution for enterprise-wide data integration projects.

"As data analysis becomes increasingly important to customers in the United States, collaborating with a company like Innovative provides us with a great opportunity to break into a key market," said Tony Rodriguez, CEO, Avellino. "Innovative offers more than 30 years' experience in data quality management, a large customer base that includes blue-chip companies, and software complementary to our own data analysis tools. In the U.K. market, the growth of customer-centric databases makes it strategic for Avellino to have an alliance with a leading supplier of solutions that augment customer-centric databases. We have evaluated a broad range of providers in this space and have determined that Innovative best meets our needs."

In data integration projects, Avellino Discovery enables organizations to discover the true content, structure, relationships and quality of source data before it is moved into a new environment. Innovative's data quality and linking software parses, cleans, matches and households customer information, ranging from basic name-and-address data to more complex corporate data and user-defined fields. Discovery will synthesize the functionality of both companies' products, providing a seamless data management solution.

Traditionally, Innovative's offerings have been employed as data quality issues arise in the later stages of enterprise information projects that include eBusiness, data warehousing, customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP). The addition of Discovery to Innovative's product suite positions the company to become involved in the early phases of these projects.

To ensure smooth installations at customer sites, Avellino and Innovative have instituted a rigorous cross-training program on each other's products for their technical staff. The close working relationship between the two companies will prove extremely beneficial to their clients. When necessary, the firms will jointly staff project teams to supplement each other's expertise.

About Avellino Discovery(TM)

Avellino's data analysis automation tool, Avellino Discovery, automatically examines the source data to be moved into the new system infrastructure in integration projects. Because it does not rely on data definition rules, metadata or out-of-date documentation, it is far more accurate than manual methods and eliminates the assumptions that can lead to project failure. Avellino Discovery holds all source data within its own unique repository and has the additional advantage of allowing users to drill right down to individual data rows and attributes should a problem or discrepancy be noticed. It can help reduce the time required for data analysis by as much as 90 percent over manual methods.

About Avellino

Founded in 1997, Avellino is a U.K.-based independent provider of end-to-end solutions and strategic data integration consultancy. Avellino specializes in the planning, design, building, testing and implementation of some of the most technically challenging data integration projects in Europe.

Avellino's headquarters are in Aldermaston, Berkshire and its U.K. customers include Scottish & Southern Energy, Anglian Water, Lloyds TSB, British Gas, EDS, First Direct, Co-operative Insurance (CIS), Xerox and many others. More information can be found by visiting www.avellino.com.

About Innovative Systems, Inc.

Innovative Systems helps organizations to clean, understand and use customer data. The company assists clients with the migration, consolidation and storage of customer-centric data to create a unified view of any customer across the enterprise.

For more than 30 years, enterprise-class companies have relied on Innovative's data integrity and data linking software, systems integration, database solutions and third-party reviews of customer data. Innovative maintains headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with European operations based in London. Representative offices are located in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Spain. Innovative's Web site is located at www.innovativesystems.net.