ASCENTIAL SOFTWARE AND KALIDO FORM ALLIANCE TO DELIVER SOLUTION FOR DYNAMIC MANAGEMENT OF ENTERPRISE DATA WAREHOUSES

Westboro and Burlington, Mass. - March 1, 2004 - Ascential Software Corporation (Nasdaq:ASCL), the enterprise data integration leader, and Kalido, the leading data warehouse lifecycle management (DWLM) software provider, have entered into an alliance to provide Global 2000 companies with leading-edge DWLM solutions that can increase the strategic value of business information throughout periods of change. Under this relationship the companies are collaborating on sales, marketing and product integration.

The integration of the Ascential(tm) Enterprise Integration Suite and KALIDO® DWLM Suite provides a best-in-class business insight application to meet the information needs of highly dynamic enterprises. The benefits of the joint solution include accelerating time to implementation, reducing total lifetime cost, and lowering risk. In addition, the offerings from Ascential Software and Kalido complement and interoperate with the market's leading business intelligence tools.

Ascential Software and Kalido together have successfully deployed solutions to organizations including Royal/Dutch Shell Group and HBOS Plc, formed from the merger of Halifax Bank and the Bank of Scotland. The combined offering is designed to automate the delivery of data from multiple transactional and operational systems to a flexible, pre-built data warehouse that is business-model driven.

This solution accelerates the delivery of reliable reports on financials and other key performance metrics such as customer service, sales and marketing, supply chain management, and logistics. Traditionally, companies have struggled to achieve the same result with custom-built data warehousing.

The KALIDO DWLM Suite automates the building and management of data warehouses and their master data for rapid implementation and updates without the need for software programming. Data is prepared for movement into a KALIDO data warehouse using the Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite, which combines industry-leading solutions for data profiling, data quality and data transformation. Ascential's Suite operates on a shared platform of software services for unlimited scalability through parallel processing, complete meta data management, any-to-any connectivity and on-demand data integration.

Cliff Longman, chief technology officer, Kalido, comments: "Ascential and Kalido have worked together successfully on some of the most high profile data warehousing projects in the world. It is a key element of our Data Warehouse Lifecycle Management (DWLM) approach to partner with the leading Enterprise Data Integration vendor, and Ascential Software offers the most complete, best performing solution in this category. Our customers tell us they want an integrated, seamless solution for business performance management across major enterprise applications and this alliance will help us to deliver exactly that."

Mark Register, chief marketing officer and vice president of marketing, industry solutions and global strategic alliances at Ascential Software, adds: "Better management of dynamic data within the enterprise data warehouse is an important focus of successful IT organizations as they strive to achieve a single, consistent view of their business. Ascential Software's established reputation as an enterprise data integration innovator, coupled with Kalido's unique data warehouse lifecycle management software and experience with Global 2000 organizations, provides a compelling value proposition for our customers and partnership."

Ian Taylor, head of group procurement, HBOS plc, states: "We are very pleased that two of our key partners in the award-winning HBOS supplier relationship management (HBOS SRM) system are now entering into a partnership. We find both partner offerings to be essential and highly complementary in creating and managing any large enterprise data warehouse throughout its lifecycle. We are very satisfied with the speed of implementation and the results from the HBOS SRM system."

Madan Sheina, business intelligence analyst, ComputerWire, comments: "This partnership strikes all the right chords in the market as companies look for integrated, rather than point, solutions from their IT suppliers. Both companies already have a strong heritage in the data warehousing arena, and the combination of Ascential's broad data integration prowess with Kalido's dynamic and highly adaptive platform will significantly enhance the value proposition to customers seeking to integrate their information value chain."

About Ascential Software

Ascential Software Corporation is the leading provider of enterprise data integration solutions to organizations worldwide. Customers use the Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite to integrate and leverage data across all transactional, operational, and analytical applications with confidence in the accuracy, completeness and timeliness of critical information. Ascential Software's powerful data profiling, data quality, data transformation, parallel processing, meta data and connectivity solutions enable customers to reduce total cost of ownership and increase return on IT investment. Headquartered in Westboro, Mass., Ascential Software has offices worldwide and supports more than 3,000 customers in such industries as financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, life sciences, manufacturing, consumer goods, retail, and government. More information on Ascential Software can be found on the Web at www.ascential.com.

About Kalido

Kalido is the leading data warehouse lifecycle management (DWLM) software provider. The KALIDO® DWLM Suite automates data warehouse creation and modification to provide business users with timely and consolidated management information throughout organizational change. This ability empowers IT and the business to become more closely aligned to help accelerate financial reporting and enhance performance management of key business entities such as customers, brands, sales, marketing, supply and logistics.

The KALIDO DWLM Suite consists of adaptive data warehouse and master data management software. This software application portfolio allows users to rapidly build and maintain an enterprise data warehouse and its master data without the need for programming or operational system standardization. The software suite is designed upon UK-patented technology that enables the business model within the data warehouse to be easily modified to keep it continuously up to date with the business as it changes. Kalido's software reduces the creation and lifecycle maintenance staffing costs of data warehouses by 55 per cent or more compared to custom-built solutions according to an independently audited study.

Kalido serves major companies in over 100 countries including Cadbury Schweppes, HBOS plc, Intelsat, Philips, Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Companies (Shell), and Unilever. A privately-held software company, Kalido is headquartered in Burlington, Mass. and London, UK and has regional sales offices throughout the United States, United Kingdom, and France. Kalido works closely with technology partners and large system integrators for the deployment of Kalido data warehousing projects. More information about Kalido can be found at: http://www.kalido.com.


FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

Lorita Ba 
Horn Group, Inc. 
ph: 781.356.7145  | mobile: 401.556.1187 
lba@horngroup.com | AIM: lorita113