SMBS FACE INCREASING DBA COSTS AND RESOURCE LIMITATIONS.

Aberdeen Group Inc., Austin,Texas, an IT market analysis and consulting firm, has released research that advises application developers to select databases carefully and evaluate according to performance, administrative ease-of-use, minimal downtime, flexibility and cost of ownership. The research concludes that Pervasive Software's (NASDAQ:PVSW) robust and scalable database engine, Pervasive.SQL V8, is a superior choice for database users who value high performance, low cost and low maintenance.

Many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) face increasing database administrative costs and resource limitations, and require high-performance data management solutions from the developers who build applications for them. Aberdeen refers to these SMB users as 'low IT' in the report and recommends these buyers consider choosing a database especially designed for these requirements or that can be seamlessly embedded in an application. In addition, Aberdeen notes that 'low IT users,' who typically make purchasing decisions solely on the application, also need to consider long-term maintenance costs.

"Pervasive Software understands the challenges of low-IT environments and consistently rates extremely well according to Aberdeen's recommended database evaluation criteria," said Wayne Kernochan, managing vice president, databases, development environments and software infrastructure at Aberdeen Group. "Pervasive has established itself as a provider of an exceptional low-ownership-cost embedded database and shows an ability to achieve 'near-lights-out' administration."

With cost comparisons encompassing total cost of deployment and five-year lifetime costs, Aberdeen's research found that Pervasive.SQL has a clear superiority, particularly with regard to maintenance costs. Pervasive.SQL V8 showed an average 2.5-to-1 superiority in cost of ownership over Sybase SQL Anywhere Studio V7, 7-to-1 over Microsoft's SQL Server 2000, and 25-to-1 superiority over Oracle 9i. Pervasive.SQL's superiority is due in large part to achieving 'near-lights-out' administration.

Aberdeen's study also indicates that Pervasive.SQL adapts well to multiple platforms, including Linux, and exhibits clear advantages in mass-deployment situations. In addition, according to Aberdeen, this superiority is likely to continue as wide as it has been for the last four years of Aberdeen studies.

About Pervasive Software

Pervasive Software is a global data management company powering the success of application developers by providing solutions that deliver the industry's best combination of performance, reliability and low administration costs. Pervasive's strength is evidenced by the size and diversity of its customer base, serving tens of thousands of customers with hundreds of thousands of end-users in nearly every vertical market around the world. Founded in 1994, Pervasive sells its products into more than 150 countries and is based in Austin, Texas, with offices in Europe.

For more information, visit http://www.pervasive.com or call 512/231-6033.