ASCL Ascential Software - Common Stock (MM)

CNP Assurances Gains Single View of Customer with Data Integration Platform from Ascential Software Leading French Personal Insurance Provider Relies on Ascential Software to Reduce Infrastructure Costs and Improve Customer Portfolio Visibility WESTBORO, Mass., March 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Ascential Software Corporation (NASDAQ:ASCL), the enterprise data integration leader, today announced that CNP Assurances, the leading personal insurance company in France, has standardized on Ascential DataStage(TM), a core component of Ascential Enterprise Integration Suite(TM), to reduce infrastructure costs, optimize the company's IT system, and achieve a single view of customer portfolios in real time. CNP uses the extract, transform, and load (ETL) capabilities of Ascential DataStage to populate a standardized model for all insurance data and certify and qualify outgoing administrative, financial, and customer data. The data is subsequently fed into accounting databases so that internal CNP users and CNP partners are able to obtain customer information in a timely manner. By consolidating customer information across the entire production cycle, CNP is able to make confident business decisions. "When we looked at other solutions on the market, we realized Ascential DataStage is by far the most advanced solution available. Its capacity to process large volumes of data, its meta data management tools, and the design of its parallel processing tool, all met our needs and constituted the most appropriate solution for our environment," said Phat-Chua Lim, CNP IT director. "As a key element of our information system, Ascential DataStage serves as a data flow manager and powers our information system optimization program." CNP will leverage the extensive scalability of Ascential DataStage, as the CNP database currently contains 1.5 terabytes of data, which is the equivalent of approximately 10 million contracts. The database will ultimately consist of three to four terabytes of data. "I regard data integration as one of the cornerstones of any information system. This process is positioned at a strategic level in our information systems architecture and has made a major contribution to the optimization of our information system," said Lim. "As new regulations surface in the industry, combined with customer demands for real-time account information, insurance companies need to have innovative data management infrastructures in order to gain competitive advantage," said Stephane Werba, managing director, Ascential Software Western Europe. "The Ascential Software solution is helping insurance companies worldwide, such as CNP, to meet data standardization and data quality objectives." Ascential DataStage enables companies to tightly integrate enterprise information, regardless of the sources, targets and timeframes. Whether an organization is building an enterprise data warehouse to support the information needs of the entire company, building a "real-time" data warehouse, or integrating dozens of source systems to support strategic business systems such as CRM, SCM, ERP, BI/analytics, and e-business, Ascential DataStage helps in the success of enterprise data integration initiatives. 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, and any-to-any data source and application connectivity, and delivers on-demand data integration seamlessly within an enterprise's service-oriented architecture. About CNP Assurances CNP, an insurance specialist with 150 years of experience, is widely recognized for its contract management know-how (11.5 million contracts) which serves the needs of 14 million persons. In order to ensure that CNP's savings products are readily available, CNP relies mainly on agreements with its partners La Poste and Caisses d'Epargne as well as CNP Treasury advisors. For group insurance, CNP Assurances works with 250 financial institutions, more than 1,000 companies, more than 50 mutual insurers, and 20,000 local governments. Abroad, CNP Assurances is pursuing a selective development strategy by exporting its expertise. The company is active in Italy, Portugal, Brazil and Argentina and is currently developing a project in China. 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(TM) 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 (508-366-3888 if calling from outside the US 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 support an extensible data model so an organization can maintain the same data model even as data volumes greatly expand; the ability of Ascential Software's products to handle massive, growing volumes of healthcare information, resulting from data-intensive initiatives, most notably HIPAA and electronic medical records; the ability of Ascential Software's products to 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. All rights reserved. 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. DATASOURCE: Ascential Software CONTACT: Chas Kielt of Ascential Software Corporation, +1-508-599-7256, ; or Mary Keith of Porter Novelli, +1-617-897-8281, Web site: http://www.ascentialsoftware.com/

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