New Sagent Product Brings EII to the Masses; Sagent OpenLink Enables 3rd-Party Applications to Access Multiple Data Sources, Perform Analytics.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

META Group's METAmorphosis PLUS! Conference & Technology Showcase

SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 3, 2003

Sagent (Nasdaq:SGNT), a leading provider of enterprise business intelligence solutions, today announced the availability of Sagent OpenLink, a new product that allows any ODBC or JDBC-compliant software application to leverage the analytical power of Sagent's Data Access Server. Today's announcement was made at META Group's METAmorphosis PLUS! Conference & Technology Showcase, San Diego, February 3-5. Business analysts who work with business intelligence tools such as Actuate, Brio, Business Objects, Cognos, Crystal Decisions and Microsoft Excel can now use Sagent to transparently incorporate advanced analytics into their existing reports and business performance management solutions. Application developers can use Sagent OpenLink to query information from data warehouses and heterogeneous operational systems, then integrate, transform and deliver architected data sets that are fully accessible via SQL.

"Sagent spent the past year talking to customers and partners and taking a critical look at our corporate strategy and technology," said Dave Henry, VP of Marketing. "Based on customer input and current shortcomings in the industry's data integration products and solutions, we saw an opportunity to add the missing pieces of the Enterprise Information Integration (EII) puzzle: seamless BI tool integration, concurrent access to diverse data sources, and a component-based analytical engine. With Sagent OpenLink, the company has made a critical transition into an open, best-of-breed middleware platform for analytical and operational applications. Sagent technology is bridging the gap between the isolated worlds of data warehouses and operational applications to enable a new generation of intelligent business applications."

Companies have invested heavily in query and reporting and OLAP tools, and often employ multiple solutions across the enterprise. However, these front-end BI tools can only access a single data source at a time and have analytic capabilities that are restricted by physical database schemas. When combined with the Sagent platform, these BI tools become powerful analytic applications, enabling users to access data from multiple sources and calculate new metrics for their analyses, such as profitability forecasts, customer segmentation and time-period variances. The Sagent Data Access Server and Sagent OpenLink provide strategic leverage to the BI development lifecycle by allowing business users to validate additions to analytical applications before the underlying databases or MOLAP cubes are changed.

"EII technologies increasingly will bolster customer data integration initiatives, but they won't supplant ETL-powered data warehouses that drive many business intelligence solutions," said Doug Laney, Vice President, META Group. "We advise enterprises to consider adopting forms of data integration that meet both analyst-driven data integration and data warehouse development needs."

Sagent OpenLink is compatible with the Sagent 4.5i Access Server and is immediately available for beta testing by Sagent customers, partners and prospects. General availability is planned for Q1 2003.

About META Group

META Group (Nasdaq:METG) is a leading research and consulting firm, focusing on information technology and business transformation strategies. Delivering objective, consistent, and actionable guidance, META Group enables organizations to innovate more rapidly and effectively. Our unique collaborative models help clients succeed by building speed, agility, and value into their IT and business systems and processes. For details, connect with www.metagroup.com.

About Sagent

Sagent's patented technology fundamentally changes the way that data warehouses are built and accessed. Sagent's unique data flow server enables business users to easily extend the structure of a data warehouse with new analytics that support immediate business needs. This technology is at the core of Sagent's ETL, EII and business intelligence solutions, as well as multiple partner solutions that address the needs of specific vertical and functional application areas. Sagent has more than 1,500 customers worldwide, including: AT&T, Boeing Employees Credit Union, BP Amoco, Carrefour, Citibank, Diageo, Heineken, Kawasaki, Kemper National Insurance, La Poste, NTT-DoCoMo, Siemens, and Singapore Telecom. Key partners include Advent Software, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, HAHT Commerce, Hyperion, Microsoft, Satyam, Sun Microsystems, and Unisys. The company also maintains a business partnership with CDC Software Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary and software unit of chinadotcom corporation, which includes a strategic investment in Sagent. Sagent is headquartered in Mountain View, California. For more information about Sagent, please visit www.sagent.com.

Note to Editors: Sagent and Sagent Solution are trademarks of Sagent Technology Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.