Monday, July 16, 2007

Ascential Software Sets Sights on South East Asia

Ascential Software Sets Sights on South East Asia

Former Informix Business Solutions sets up SEA HQ in Singapore to enable businesses to transform information into competitive economic advantage Ascential Software, the leading provider of Information Asset Management solutions, officially launched their South East Asia headquarters in Singapore on 18 May 2001, at the Fullerton Hotel.

(PRWEB) June 28, 2001

MEDIA RELEASE

Ascential Software Sets Sights on South East Asia

Former Informix Business Solutions sets up SEA HQ in Singapore to enable businesses to transform information into competitive economic advantage

Singapore, 26 June, 2001: Ascential Software, the leading provider of Information Asset Management solutions, officially launched their South East Asia headquarters in Singapore on 18 May 2001, at the Fullerton Hotel.

Informix Business Solutions was spun off in September 2000, from the consolidation of Informix Corporation¡¦s five business units into two: the Database Business Operations division and the Solutions Business Operations division. The latter was renamed Ascential Software in January 2001. Fuelling the growth of Ascential, the company is set to receive an injection of US$1 billion from the sale of Informix database unit to IBM, announced in late April 2001.

¡§We will have approximately US$1 billion in cash, no debt, and the prospect of strong revenue growth, which will yield an enormous amount of financial resources and flexibility to Ascential to pursue its strategic and market opportunities,¡¨ said Peter Gyenes, Chairman and CEO of Informix.

With over 1,000 employees worldwide, Ascential has extended its presence across 25 countries, establishing headquarters in US, Europe, South Africa and Asia Pacific. In Asia, Ascential has offices in Korea, Beijing, Taiwan, Malaysia, Hong Kong and Singapore, with Hong Kong being the headquarters for Asia.

Ascential identifies telecommunications, insurance, banking and finance, media/ entertainment, healthcare and retail as its key target sectors.

Barely a year since inception, Ascential has over 200 valued partners worldwide and supports more than 1,830 customers globally, with about 10% or 180 Asian customers. This ¡¥repeatable success¡¦ methodology translates into speed to market for Ascential¡¦s clients. The company¡¦s portfolio of local customers include esteemed names such as Singapore Airlines, SingTel, Standard Chartered Bank, OCBC, Bank of Tokyo, Siemens Medical Instruments, Seiyu Singapore and Singapore Power.

¡§At Ascential, we see a huge global market for our data integration and content management software solutions, especially Singapore. We see Singapore as a market with great growth potential over the next several years. We want to be one of the first to establish a foothold in the market ahead of competitors,¡¨ said Dereck Daymond, Regional Managing Director, Asia Pacific, Japan, Africa and Middle East, Ascential Software. ¡§The key factors driving our continued expansion is companies¡¦ increasing need to leverage and combine corporate information sources ¡V including legacy mainframe data, eCommerce data, transactional systems and more ¡V to drive new business models and applications such as CRM and B2B and B2C eCommerce solutions.¡¨

Ascential¡¦s suite of Information Asset Management products and services help companies reduce costs, improve profitability and increase customer-centricity by transforming disparate data and content enterprise-wide into reusable strategic information assets.

The company is targeting to have one principal implementation of its flagship media asset management offering, Media360TM in each country by this year. Adopters of Media360TM include media owners with vast digital archive libraries such as CNN, Time Inc., Walt Disney World, BMG Entertainment, etc.

¡§Customers consistently recognize Ascential¡¦s solutions as offering a more robust platform ¡V with more support for complex environments, mixed data types and large information volumes ¡V for solving real world problems,¡¨ said Patrick Lo, Director, Asia, Ascential Software. ¡§These technical features, coupled with Ascential¡¦s strong financial resources; global sales and consulting organization; proven product line; experienced management team; and broad portfolio of strategic alliances with other industry leaders create a very formidably competitive advantage for Ascential in the market.¡¨

For the year ahead, Ascential has just established its China office and sets Thailand as their next market for penetration. ¡§This is our first year in operation as a separate entity and we see this as a significant start for Ascential in the region. We expect 30-40% growth on 2000 figures so we expect the number of staff to increase as we grow our market share and become seen as ¡¥the¡¦ Information Asset Management provider,¡¨ said Jane Lim, Area Director, South East Asia, Ascential Software.

For fiscal and calendar year 2000, Ascential reported revenues of US$122 million worldwide, of which about 10% were contributed by its Asian operations. The company projects revenue growth to be 35% to 40% in 2001 over 2000 and about 40% to 50% growth in 2002 over 2001, with similar projections for the Asian region.

In a recent report on the market for data integration solutions, the Giga Group recognized Ascential as the market share leader with 17% of the global market in 2000. A similar report from IDC for the same period predicted that the overall market for data replication and movement tools would grow at a 25% compound annual growth rate for the next few years.

Ends

Notes to Editors

Ascential¡¦s Four Main Products Areas:

Ascential is focused on four main product areas that help its customers solve the most complex information asset management challenges:

„h DataStage„µ XE

Performs the vital functions necessary to extract, transform and integrate structured and unstructured data from a wide variety of sources and systems into data warehouses, data marts, e-analytic applications, and between B2B applications, providing comprehensive meta data management and data quality assurance capabilities;

„h Media360TM

Media360„· is a complete solution for collecting, digitizing, managing, re-using and distributing a wide range of media assets that enable sharing of information - held in one central location, anytime, anywhere;

„h Axielle„·

Provides a second-generation enterprise-wide portal solution for managing and delivering enterprise information via the web, and is the first portal solution to integrate with an enterprise¡¦s information infrastructure;

„h Web Success„§

A family of customer-centric analytic components, leveraging Ascential¡¦s industry-leading data integration platform and both horizontal and vertical data models to reduce time to deployment for e-analytic applications.

About Ascential Software

Ascential Software is the leading provider of Information Asset Management solutions to the Global 2000. Customers use Ascential products to turn vast amounts of disparate, unrefined data into reusable information assets that drive business success. Ascential's unique framework for Information Asset Management enables customers to easily collect, validate, organize, administer and deliver information assets to realize more value from their enterprise data, reduce costs and increase profitability. Headquartered in Westboro, Massachusetts, Ascential has offices worldwide and supports more than 1700 customers in such industries as telecommunications, insurance, financial services, healthcare, media/entertainment and retail. Ascential is an independent operating company of Informix Corporation (NASDAQ:IFMX) and can be found on the Web at http://www. ascentialsoftware. com (http://www. ascentialsoftware. com).

Editorial Contact:

Jane Lim

Area Director

Tel: 65-2981716

Fax: 65-2989175

Email: janelim@ascentialsoftware. com

Derrick Koh/ Jann Yip 

EASTWEST Public Relations

Tel: 65-2220306

Fax: 65-2220124

Mobile: 96910292/96512844

Email: derrick@eastwestpr. com. sg/ jann@eastwestpr. com. sg