Microcell Telecommunications Prepares for Future Growth with Ascential's Information Asset Management Solution Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Company Improves Customer Acquisition and Retention with Ascential DataStage XE WESTBORO, Mass. October 17, 2001 Ascential Software Corporation (NASDAQ: ASCL), the leading provider of Information Asset Management (IAM) solutions, today announced that Microcell Telecommunications (NASDAQ: MICT; TSE: MTI.B), a leading Canadian wireless operator, is using DataStage XE, Ascential's industry-leading data integration solution, to increase Microcell's understanding of its customers' needs. Using DataStage XE to populate its terabyte data warehouse with daily customer data and wireless call records, Microcell has more than tripled the bandwidth of its nightly update process. DataStage XE is also stabilizing the company's data warehouse production environment and ensuring the firm's ability to use up-to-date business information to sustain last year's 58 percent growth of its customer base. Previously, Microcell used hand-coded programs to load customer data and call detail reporting files (CDR) into an Oracle enterprise warehouse on a Sun Solaris server. As Microcell grew in 2000 the data volume in each nightly update soared from two to eight million records and the warehouse grew to nearly one terabyte. By replacing manually written code with DataStage jobs, and using DataStage to populate a new subject area in the data warehouse, Microcell is now processing up to eight million rows of data into the warehouse in a third of the time previously required. "DataStage is improving Microcell's competitiveness by allowing us to quickly and reliably make available massive amounts of data regarding our customers' calling preferences and needs," said Pierre Bonin, Microcell's vice-president and chief information officer. "Using the Ascential solution, we're able to more rapidly and cost-effectively develop strategies to retain and acquire customers using accurate, timely information." Strategic Information Asset Management DataStage also provides higher stability and bandwidth for Microcell's production environment. By allowing the firm's IT team to start the warehouse update later at night and finish it sooner, Microcell is improving its record of on-time warehouse delivery and is able to add new capacity in the overnight update window. Likewise Microcell has been able to reduce costs and increase data accuracy by using less expensive contractors and redirecting efforts toward adding stability features such as error checking, faulty record handling and failure condition recovery. Collectively, these enhancements strengthen Microcell's capacity to add new customers and meet data loads expected to increase significantly without requiring new processing power. "DataStage maximizes our ability to use data as a strategic asset to advance our business objectives," concluded Bonin. "The more we use it the better it gets, and the more it helps our company." About Microcell Telecommunications About Ascential Software |