IBM to Acquire Ascential Software

IBM (www.ibm.com) and Ascential Software Corporation (Nasdaq: ASCL) today announced the two companies have entered into a definitive agreement for IBM to acquire the equity of Ascential Software, a publicly held company based in Westboro, Mass., in an all cash transaction at a price of approximately $1.1 billion or $18.50 per share.

The acquisition is subject to Ascential Software shareholder and regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, and is expected to close in the second quarter of 2005.

Ascential Software is a leading provider of enterprise data integration software. Customers worldwide use Ascential's data integration software to build enterprise data warehouses, power business intelligence systems, consolidate enterprise applications, create and manage master repositories of critical business information, and enable on demand data access.

The acquisition complements and strengthens IBM's fast-growing information integration business, a key part of the company's information management efforts and a unit that produced triple-digit growth in 2004. Ascential Software also grew rapidly in 2004, with a reported 46 percent total revenue increase to $271.9 million.

"Information integration is an important enabler of an on demand business strategy and customers are increasing their investments in software that allows them to rapidly analyze, consolidate and extract value from their business data," said Steve Mills, senior vice president and group executive, IBM Software Group.

The acquisition announced today addresses a key customer challenge -- applying technology to respond much more quickly to changing market conditions.
Ascential Software's ability to quickly gather, move and enhance the quality of large amounts of data complements IBM's WebSphere Information Integrator product portfolio. WebSphere Information Integrator software enables customers to centrally manage and access data that is stored across a variety of structured and unstructured sources, from IBM and non-IBM vendors, in real-time.

For example, a company trying to consolidate data from multiple ERP systems into a single system could leverage WebSphere Information Integrator to access various mainframe or distributed sources for profiling and assessment, and then use Ascential Software's data migration and transformation capabilities to integrate the data.

IBM is acquiring Ascential Software to extend the industry's broadest and deepest offering for standards-based business integration across heterogeneous environments.

IDC, a global market intelligence and advisory firm in the information technology and telecommunications industries, projects that worldwide data integration spending will increase from $9.3 billion in 2003 to $13.6 billion in 2008.

"The integration market is changing and evolving as customers demonstrate a preference for broad solutions that meet enterprise integration requirements," said Peter Gyenes, chairman and chief executive officer, Ascential Software.

Ascential Software already integrates with IBM WebSphere Business Integration software as part of a service-oriented architecture (SOA), providing complex data movement and transformation within a process step, thereby helping customers speed time-to-market and increase their ROI.