Precise Selected by Mexico's Largest Steel Producer, IMSA, to Manage the Performance of its SAP R/3 Environment.

Business/Technology Editors

WESTWOOD, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 12, 2001

The Precise Solutions Improve the Performance

of a SAP R/3 Process from 40 Minutes to Seconds

Precise Software Solutions (Nasdaq: PRSE), a leader in optimizing business through application performance management, has been selected by IMSA, Mexico's leading producer of processed steel. IMSA, the largest division of Grupo IMSA, a $2.2 billion diversified Mexican industrial company, relies on the Precise solutions to optimize the performance of its SAP R/3 environment. Located in four plants and 14 distribution centers throughout Mexico, IMSA's SAP infrastructure includes manufacturing, inventory, sales, quality control, planning, and financial applications.

"Precise's invaluable solutions allow us to optimize the performance of our SAP R/3 environment, including customizations that we developed in-house, both in development and in production. We can now quickly identify performance bottlenecks and resolve problems faster and more effectively," said Javier Cantu, IMSA Manager of Databases and IT Infrastructure.

IMSA uses the Precise solutions, designed specifically for SAP R/3, to proactively monitor and tune its production environment, keeping all its applications running smoothly and continuously available to over 900 end-users. "Precise has improved the performance of our SAP R/3 environment - in some cases by as much as 200 to 300 percent," said Cantu. "We chose Precise partly because of the partnership and integration with EMC which provides us with a complete correlated view of application performance across the entire infrastructure - from the application server through the database and all the way down to a specific EMC Symmetrix storage device. This gives us the breadth and depth of quality information we need to proactively identify application problems and correct them before our end-users are affected."

"In our high-volume SAP R/3 environment, Precise provides a greater level of detail with little to no overhead on the system, far less than any of the alternative products we considered. It enables us to drill-down and identify all the actual transactions, programs, or users consuming large amounts of system resources and resolve the root causes of these performance bottlenecks. Now, a manufacturing floor transaction, which once took 40 minutes, takes just seconds," continued Javier Cantu. "Furthermore, we can quickly and automatically identify Oracle database I/O peaks and bottlenecks and associate them with specific storage array devices. This information allows us to optimize our I/O database operations and expedite data retrieval."

IMSA also uses Precise for real-time monitoring and alerting, sending pager alarms to notify Mr. Cantu and his BASIS team when performance thresholds have been exceeded - giving them the advance warning and information they need to eliminate performance surprises. In addition, all of IMSA's performance data, collected by the Precise solutions throughout the application's life-cycle, is stored in the Precise Performance Warehouse(TM). This long-term historical perspective helps IMSA compare and analyze current performance with past performance, verify customization code efficiencies, and analyze usage patterns and trends to determine acceptable baselines and future system needs.

"Highly competitive international companies, such as IMSA, rely on efficient IT processes to maximize their resources and profitability," said Andrew Bird, Executive Vice President of Marketing at Precise Software Solutions. "Not only do Precise's tailored solutions for SAP R/3 help make existing technology work better, they also improve the total quality of service delivered to end-users. This helps accelerate our customers' return on investment in the total deployment costs of SAP R/3. In today's economy, these are very compelling reasons why large enterprises, like IMSA, are turning to Precise to manage the performance of their SAP infrastructure."

About IMSA

IMSA, based in Monterrey, Mexico, is a division of Grupo IMSA, a holding company founded in 1936 which today is one of Mexico's leading diversified industrial companies. Grupo IMSA operates in four core businesses: steel processed products; automotive batteries and related products; aluminum and other related products; and steel and plastic construction products. With manufacturing facilities in Mexico, the United States and throughout Central and South America, Grupo IMSA currently exports to five continents. In 2000, Grupo IMSA's sales reached $2.2 billion, of which close to 45% was generated outside Mexico. Grupo IMSA's shares trade on the Mexican Stock Exchange (IMSA) and, in the United States, on the NYSE (IMY).

About Precise Software Solutions -- "Performance is Our Business(TM)":

Precise Software Solutions (Nasdaq: PRSE) headquartered in Westwood, Mass., helps businesses perform - by improving the performance of their applications. By continuously monitoring and analyzing all vital components of the application infrastructure, "from URL to SQL and Beyond(TM)", the Precise solutions proactively detect and correct the root causes of performance degradation before they affect response times. The Precise solutions identify trends and deviations from the norm, delivering the right balance of data acquisition, analysis and visualization to facilitate performance optimization and strategic business planning.

Precise recently acquired W. Quinn Associates, Inc., (www.wquinn.com), a recognized leader in storage resource and performance management solutions which currently support the Microsoft(R) Windows(R) NT/2000 platforms. Now, over 4,400 leading enterprises worldwide, including Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies, are using Precise's solutions to help maximize their technology investments and meet their business goals. Precise has offices throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East, Far East and Pacific Rim, as well as a global network of resellers and distributors. More information on Precise is available at www.precise.com.