Major Shoe and Apparel Retailer Finds CA's Integrated Year 2000 Conversion Solution to be a Perfect Fit.

ISLANDIA, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--February 12, 1997--

CA Discovery 2000 Allows J. Baker To Be

Fully Prepared For Application Testing By 1999

Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) announced today that shoe and apparel retailer J. Baker, Inc. has selected CA Discovery 2000, CA's integrated end-to-end software and services solution for Year 2000 compliance, to help convert its programs for the century date change.

Utilizing CA's award winning software, J. Baker is well positioned to meet an aggressive Year 2000 compliance program. The Canton, Mass.-based company, well into the assessment phase of its Year 2000 initiative, plans to have all systems fully tested and in production by early 1999, giving it a full year to test all programs.

"We all agreed there was a high degree of urgency to this effort," said Jay M. Scheiner, First Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer. "As a result, we needed a conversion tool that would not only locate date fields and return test results, but also provide a workbench environment for editing, compiling, and testing the changes."

To prepare its 2.5 million lines of computer code to operate flawlessly with the century date change, J. Baker management has embarked on an ambitious timetable that calls for analysis and programming to be completed by the end of 1997. Few major companies have implemented their Year 2000 conversion projects on such an aggressive schedule.

"It's impossible to get started too early on Year 2000 projects," said Scheiner. "These projects come with the ultimate drop dead date - one you simply can't push back, or buy relief from."

After considering its myriad requirements, J. Baker picked CA Discovery 2000, first to analyze its inventory of custom-developed and packaged software, and then to implement the appropriate changes in a CA Discovery 2000 environment.

"CA Discovery 2000 gives us a comprehensive handle on our Year 2000 date change effort because it provides all the functionality we need to analyze and convert our custom-developed and purchased programs and applications," said Scheiner.

According to Scheiner, J. Baker regards the Year 2000 issue as more of a business problem than a technical challenge. Over the past two years, the company has put an awareness campaign into effect so upper management is fully conscious of the situation. It was also important for the company that the technical issues associated with the date conversion not be underestimated.

Like many retailers, J. Baker has already been impacted by the Year 2000 issue. By the end of 1995, the company had to adapt its cash register software to accept credit cards with expiration dates after the year 2000. In addition, some of the company's purchase orders from international firms have lead times of over a year, so J. Baker had to update its P.O. system well in advance. The company worked backwards from the Year 2000, identifying tasks, determining priorities, and allocating resources.

J. Baker is well ahead of the curve in its efforts to identify the scope of its Year 2000 conversion project. By the end of 1996, three years before the deadline, the company had completed the critical analysis phase of the project. By analyzing the conversion requirements so early, the company put itself in a good position to have all its business applications converted and ready for testing two years before the absolute deadline.

"We didn't want to wait and cram six months of work into the last four weeks," said Scheiner.

To analyze its inventory of software applications, J. Baker used CA-Impact/2000, an integral part of CA Discovery 2000. The impact assessment tool helps determine the cost of converting applications to support the Year 2000 Century date change, runs under MVS, VSE, and Microsoft Windows, and can access all of the most popular source library formats.

J. Baker programmers use CA-Impact/2000 on desktop workstations to make code changes quickly, as well as compile and test programs. The tool provides a graphical interface to help identify and analyze the lines of code that reference date-sensitive fields.

Because the software's workbench environment can be used to analyze and repair a wide variety of COBOL problems, not just date fields, CA Discovery 2000 will continue to benefit J. Baker long after the calendar rolls into the twenty-first century.

Computer Associates International, Inc. (NYSE: CA), with headquarters in Islandia, N.Y., is the world leader in mission-critical business software. The company develops, licenses and supports more than 500 integrated products that include enterprise computing and information management, application development, manufacturing and financial applications. CA has over 9,000 people in 130 offices in 40 countries and had revenue of $3.9 billion in calendar year 1996. CA can be reached by visiting http://www.cai.com on the World Wide Web, emailing [e-mail] or calling 1-516-342-5224.

Operating a total of 2,229 retail locations in 48 states and the District of Columbia, J. Baker is organized into five divisions in niche footwear and apparel markets. The Canton, Mass.-based retailer grossed over $900 million in 1996.

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