Read-Rite Corporation Deploys Ascential DataStage to Accelerate Data Analysis and Decision Support in High Volume Manufacturing Operations

Data Integration Solution at Heart of Engineering Decision Support System for Leading Global Manufacturer of Disk and Tape Drive Components

WESTBORO, Mass., November 12, 2002 – Ascential Software Corporation (Nasdaq: ASCL), the enterprise data integration leader, today announced that Read-Rite (Nasdaq: RDRT) Corporation of Fremont, Calif., is deploying Ascential™ DataStage® to give its engineers greater insight into their manufacturing process through near real-time analyses of production and R&D test data.

Read-Rite is incorporating DataStage within its Engineering Decision Support System architecture to integrate production and R&D test data in a timely manner. The data is collected from individual steps in the process of manufacturing thin film heads for computer disk and tape drives to allow engineers to perform the detailed analysis, traceability, and correlations required to produce consistently high quality products.

“DataStage is a very powerful tool for our application as it allows us to quickly collate and organize the many different types of data collected at various steps of our manufacturing process,” explained Richard Vigurs, vice president and CIO at Read-Rite Corporation. “By integrating test results and other parameters that have been gathered on two continents and in many formats as the product moves through the production process, we are able to benefit from greatly improved traceability and engineers are seeing a dramatic reduction in the time it takes to analyze product and process characteristics. This collection, transformation, and organization of data in a global repository allows us to turn data into information that can be directly applied to tuning statistical process control, reducing time spent on failure analysis, and ultimately improving the entire manufacturing process for our products.”

“Read-Rite represents a growing number of manufacturers that are reaching for a much more comprehensive framework to automate shop floor analyses than they have had with other software products,” said Mike Cassettari, chief marketing officer of Ascential. “DataStage, with its built-in meta data tracking and unlimited linear scalability, gives them a comprehensive data integration bus that spans the entire manufacturing process as it normalizes and aggregates hundreds of data sources for effective analyses in real time.”

Ascential DataStage is a foundation product within the new Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite, which combines the company's three industry-leading data integration products: data profiling (MetaRecon®), data quality (INTEGRITY™), and data transformation (DataStage). These products are on a shared platform of software services for infinite linear scalability through parallel processing, management of meta-data (descriptive information about data), and any-to-any connectivity between source and target data.

The Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite's unlimited scalability is critical to high volume and real-time data integration. This scalability allows customers to tap an unlimited number of processors through parallel processing-based data integration. Today's most competitive enterprises finally can achieve the performance needed to transform their large, complex and constantly growing data flows into intelligent information by feeding that information into such strategic applications as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM), business intelligence/analytics, data warehouses, and other enterprise applications. This, in turn, allows customers to achieve the ROI that they originally expected from those applications.

About Ascential
Ascential Software Corporation is the leading provider of enterprise integration solutions to the Global 2000. Customers use the Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite and products to turn vast amounts of disparate, unrefined data into reusable information that drives business success. Ascential’s unique comprehensive data integration Suite enables customers to easily collect, validate, organize, administer and deliver information to realize more value from their enterprise data, reduce costs and increase profitability. Headquartered in Westboro, Mass., Ascential has offices worldwide and supports more than 2,200 customers in such industries as financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, life sciences, manufacturing, consumer goods and retail. More information on Ascential can be found on the Web at www.ascentialsoftware.com.

About Read-Rite
Read-Rite Corporation is one of the world's leading independent manufacturers of magnetic recording heads, head gimbal assemblies (HGAs) and head stack assemblies (HSAs) for disk drives and tape drives. The company is headquartered in Fremont, California and has operations in California, Thailand, the Philippines, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. The company’s home page on the World Wide Web can be reached at www.readrite.com.

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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 and performance capabilities of Ascential's products and technology, the enablement of detailed analysis, traceability and correlations required to produce consistently high quality products, the results of using our products including improvement of manufacturing processes, realization of returns on investment from software applications, and the ability of our customers to easily collect, validate, organize, administer and deliver information to realize more value from their enterprise data, reduce costs and increase profitability. The following factors, among others, could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these forward-looking statements: risks relating to Ascential's sale to IBM of its database business, the ability of Ascential 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 Ascential, dependence on international operations, and difficulties that Ascential 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 with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including, without limitation, the most recent Annual Report on Form 10-Q. Ascential disclaims any intent or obligation to update any forward-looking statements made herein to reflect any change in Ascential's expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions, or circumstances on which such statements are based.

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