ASCL Ascential Software - Common Stock (MM)

Ascential Software and DWL Forge Partnership to Maximize Investments in CRM Systems Enterprise Data Integration Solution Powers DWL Customer(TM) to Enhance Multi-Channel Integration and Customer Service WESTBORO, Mass., April 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Ascential Software Corporation (NASDAQ:ASCL), the enterprise data integration leader, today announced that it has entered into a sales and marketing partnership with DWL, a market leader in customer data integration (CDI) hub technology. Under terms of the agreement, DWL will recommend Ascential Software's end-to-end solution to customers requiring advanced data integration capabilities. Ascential Software and DWL will help customers achieve real-time, accurate and unified customer information, which can serve as a basis for superior service and improved profitability of customer interactions. DWL and Ascential Software mutually formed this partnership due to the leadership positions of both companies and the complementary nature of their products. Ascential Software's advanced data profiling, data quality, data transformation, parallel execution, meta data management and SOA capabilities, coupled with the massively scalable DWL Customer(TM) hub which provides more than 400 pre-built services for managing customer data, is an extremely strong combination for solving complex customer data issues. "In many organizations, the proliferation of channels and back-office systems has made the task of delivering accurate, up-to-date and comprehensive customer views a challenge," said Mark Register, chief marketing officer, Ascential Software. "The Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite(TM) meets this challenge by accessing and integrating this data, to provide customer-facing professionals with holistic, reliable, real-time views of individual customer relationships." "Unified customer information is a critical foundation for superior, highly personalized and profitable customer interactions," said Bryan Ashley, vice president of marketing and business development at DWL. "Together, DWL and Ascential Software solutions deliver the strategic architecture organizations need to solve their customer data management issues and realize the full benefit of their investments in CRM." Ascential Software's solution facilitates data integration with other applications and data quality functions to create a unified customer view, while DWL Customer manages that unified customer view as an operational system of record and provides customer data to operational applications via shared business services. DWL uses Ascential Software's solution for data integration with other applications, as well as data quality functionality in both real- time and batch. As part of their transition from product-centric to customer-centric business models, many organizations have invested heavily in CRM solutions. However, many CRM systems were not designed for the complexity of managing individual customers at an enterprise level. As a result, organizations struggle to overcome issues around data synchronization, multi-channel integration and scalability. The bottom line is that despite the significant time and resources invested, many organizations still lack a true enterprise- wide view and update environment for their customers, resulting in inconsistent service between channels, lost cross-sell and up-sell opportunities and multiple versions of customer truth. By connecting existing CRM, channel and back-office systems to an enterprise customer hub, DWL Customer manages and provides a single source of knowledge for customer data across multiple business and product silos. As a result, customer interactions can be maximized for optimum profitability -- for example, customer-facing professionals can identify high-value customers and households and provide personalized service and sales incentives. DWL Customer also aligns multi-channel systems with multi-product back office systems in real-time, providing "once and done" customer processing and a single source of customer truth across the enterprise. The Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite is a comprehensive data integration solution that profiles, cleanses, and transforms data from virtually any application or system regardless of data volume or latency. Ascential Software's integrated offering is designed to help companies streamline operations, improve customer support, expedite business transactions, and make better tactical and strategic decisions on the basis of the best available information. The Suite provides unlimited scalability through parallel processing, complete meta data management, any-to-any data source and application connectivity, and delivers on-demand data integration seamlessly within an enterprise's service-oriented architecture. About DWL DWL (http://www.dwl.com/) is the authoritative customer data integration (CDI) solution. DWL works with organizations worldwide to address enterprise- wide customer data integration (CDI) strategies using DWL Customer(TM), the most robust customer master data hub on the market. Based on a service- oriented architecture, DWL Customer(TM) provides organizations with the single source of their customer data across multiple product and business silos. It delivers this single, real-time view plus a set of unique business services to maintain and manage complex customer "events" to all channels and provides the foundation for a truly complete multi-channel integration and CRM strategy. Founded in 1996, DWL is headquartered in Atlanta and has offices in New York, Boston, Chicago, Toronto, St. Louis, London, Sao Paulo and Kuala Lumpur. DWL clients include SunTrust, MetLife, Citi Cards, Atlantic Blue Cross Care, Empire Financial, Nationwide Insurance and UnumProvident. DWL has strategic relationships with IBM, HP and leading data quality and ETL (extract, transform and load) vendors. Technology partners include IBM, BEA Systems, Oracle and Sun Microsystems. Key systems integrator relationships include IBM Business Consulting Services, Deloitte Consulting, Bearing Point and Accenture. DWL has been recognized by Deloitte as one of the fastest growing technology companies in North America for three consecutive years and by leading analyst groups including META, Forrester and Gartner as a leader in the customer data integration solution space. DWL is a registered trademark of DWL Inc. About Ascential Software Ascential Software Corporation (NASDAQ:ASCL) is the leader in enterprise data integration. Customers and partners worldwide use the Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite to confidently transform data into accurate, reliable and complete business information to improve operational performance and decision-making across every critical business dimension. Our comprehensive end-to-end solutions provide on demand data integration complemented by our professional services, industry expertise, and methodologies. Ascential Software is headquartered in Westboro, Mass., and has more than 3,000 customers and partners globally across such industries as financial services and banking, insurance, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, consumer packaged goods, telecommunications and government. For more information call 1-800-966-9875 (or 1-508-366-3888 from outside the U.S. or Canada) or visit the Ascential Software website at http://www.ascential.com/. Media and industry analysts, contact Chas Kielt, director of media and analyst relations, at 1-508-599-7256 or . Safe Harbor Statement under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995: This release contains forward-looking statements based on current expectations or beliefs, as well as a number of assumptions about future events, and these statements are subject to important factors and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in the forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this release address a variety of subjects including, for example, the functionality, characteristics, quality and performance capabilities of Ascential Software's products and technology; results achievable and benefits attainable through deployment of Ascential Software's products and provision of services; the ability of Ascential Software's products to help companies streamline operations, improve customer support, expedite business transactions, and make better tactical and strategic decisions on the basis of the best available information; and improvements in operational performance and decision-making. The following factors, among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements: the ability of the company to expand its market share; growth rates for the enterprise data integration software market; general business conditions in the software industry, the technology sector, and in the domestic and international economies; rapid technological change in the markets served by the company; dependence on international operations; global and geopolitical instability; compliance costs associated with regulations to which the company is subject, including the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, and the impact of such regulations; and difficulties that the company may experience integrating technologies, operations and personnel of completed or future acquisitions. For a detailed discussion of these and other cautionary statements, please refer to the filings made by Ascential Software with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, without limitation, the most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K. Ascential Software disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statements made herein to reflect any change in Ascential Software's expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions, or circumstances on which such statements are based. Ascential Software is not responsible for statements attributed to third parties within this release or in any materials referenced herein. Partnerships described herein shall be deemed to be strategic alliances only, and shall not imply the power of either partner to bind the other partner or to incur obligations on behalf of the other partner. Ascential and Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite are trademarks of Ascential Software Corporation or its affiliates and may be registered in the United States or other jurisdictions. Other marks are the property of the owners of those marks. Contact: Chas Kielt Kristina LeBlanc Ascential Software Corporation Porter Novelli (508) 599-7256 (617) 897-8233 DATASOURCE: Ascential Software Corporation CONTACT: Chas Kielt of Ascential Software Corporation +1-508-599-7256, ; or Kristina LeBlanc of Porter Novelli, +1-617-897-8233, Web site: http://www.ascentialsoftware.com/ http://www.dwl.com/

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