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Comshare announces Alliance with Oracle; Comshare makes strategic
commitment to Oracle technology for its decision support applications
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Date: Tuesday, February 25, 1997
Source: Business Wire
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ANN ARBOR, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE) via Individual Inc. -- Comshare
(NASDAQ:CSRE) announced today that it has signed a strategic marketing and
development agreement with Oracle Corporation to offer Comshare's decision
support applications running on Oracle's database and On-Line Analytical
Processing (OLAP) technology. Today's announcement will enable Comshare's
customers to gain all of the advantages of Comshare's value-added decision
support applications based on Oracle's market-leading technology. Comshare
and Oracle plan to collaborate on both product development and joint
marketing programs.
Comshare creates unique, high value-added decision support applications to
solve critical business problems for large corporations. Comshare's
decision support system (DSS) applications will embrace Oracle's database
and Express OLAP technology, making DSS applications easier to deploy for
Comshare customers.
The Oracle7 database is a market leader in relational databases, and Oracle
Express is a leader in the OLAP marketplace. "Support for Oracle technology
is important to a significant portion of our marketplace," says Wally
Wrathall, Comshare's president and CEO. "The use of Oracle technology will
broaden the appeal of Comshare's decision support applications. Our
customers will benefit from enhanced database scalability and the use of
industry-standard databases from Oracle."
"We're pleased to have the opportunity to do cooperative marketing with
Oracle," says Wrathall. "Our strength in applications provides a powerful
complement to Oracle's technology strength. We can already see the exciting
potential of this agreement, in our Arthur product line for the retail
industry, for example, where our customers need to manage particularly
large volumes of data."
"We welcome Comshare to our Alliance program. We are excited about the
potential of Comshare's decision support applications implemented using
Oracle technology. Comshare is a leader in the decision support market, and
their industry approach to decision support applications offers
extraordinary value to the marketplace," says Polly Sumner, Vice President,
Worldwide Alliances, Oracle.
"Our customers want the fast and easy implementation Comshare's DSS
applications provide, and at the same time they want to leverage their
existing investment in database expertise. This partnership will give our
customers who wish to standardize on Oracle a head start in leveraging
their investment by implementing Comshare's decision support applications,"
says Steve Tonissen, Senior Vice President of Marketing, Comshare.
"Working with Oracle allows us to meet our customers' demands to open our
products to a choice of database technologies for their DSS applications,"
says Wrathall. "From a development perspective, the Comshare Application
Architecture(TM) (CAA) is essential to supporting this kind of openness.
The CAA enables Comshare to deliver robust application function using
multiple database technologies. Using CAA, we can develop applications that
incorporate `best-of-breed' technology components so end users can focus on
their business, unconcerned about the underlying architecture and
technologies. The Comshare Application Architecture now supports Oracle
technology. We believe that by closely supporting Oracle Express we will
benefit from the market's natural evolution to Oracle8's planned support of
OLAP," says Wrathall. As with all its DSS applications, Comshare will offer
its customers full-service, "whole product" solutions, which include the
underlying database technology as well as the application intelligence.
Services include helpline, product training, and implementation services.
Development is now well underway to enable Comshare's applications to run
on Oracle technology. Release of Commander Decision(TM) customized decision
support applications on Express 6.0 is expected shortly. For the retail
industry, plans for delivering the Arthur(TM) Enterprise Suite based on the
Oracle7 databases were announced in January and are expected to be
commercial by the end of this year. The BOOST(TM) line of consumer goods
applications is targeted for delivery on the Oracle7 database by the end of
this year.
The Oracle agreement announced today is consistent with Comshare's
announced strategy to make its applications open to multiple databases,
allowing Comshare customers to choose the most appropriate technology for
their applications. The company will continue to offer and support Arbor
Software's Essbase database within its applications, as well.
About Oracle
Oracle Corporation is the world's second largest software company and the
largest supplier of software for information management. With annual
revenues of more than $4.2 billion, the company offers its database, tools,
and application products, along with related consulting, education, and
support services, in more than 90 countries around the world. For more
information on Oracle, visit http://www.oracle.com
The Oracle Alliance is a global business network that unites leading
information technology companies to deliver integrated customer solutions
for networked computing. Alliance members have real-time access to Oracle's
premier products and services and are able to utilize vast technical,
marketing and sales support resources. With more than 8,000 partners
worldwide, the Oracle Alliance enables partners to maximize Oracle
technology and global infrastructure to provide world-class Oracle-based
solutions for mutual customer and Alliance member benefit. Additional
information is available at http://alliance.oracle.com .
About Comshare
Comshare is The Decision Support Company. Comshare develops, markets, and
supports complete client/server decision support applications. Comshare's
software applications are designed to improve business analysis, planning,
and operations for effective decision making, enhanced competitiveness, and
improved profits. Comshare's application software is popular among major
corporations in many industries, with particular concentration in financial
services, utilities, manufacturing, energy, services, retail and consumer
goods industries. One of the top 50 independent software companies,
Comshare has over 3,000 customers worldwide, many of which are Fortune 1000
and Financial Times Top 1000 companies. Comshare, Inc. is a Microsoft
Solution Provider.
For more information, call 1-800-922-7979, or visit Comshare's Web site at
http://www.comshare.com
Comshare is a registered trademark and Comshare Application Architecture,
Arthur, BOOST, and Commander Decision are trademarks of Comshare, Inc. All
other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.
CONTACT: Comshare, Inc. | Marge Cramton, 313/996-8969 | or | Eiler
Communications | Larry T. Eiler, 313/761-3399
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Comshare to leave OLAP Council
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Date: Tuesday, April 29, 1997
Source: Business Wire
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ANN ARBOR, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE) via Individual Inc. --
Decision Support Application Vendor Announces
Intention to Exit Database Council
OLAP Council founding member Comshare, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSRE), The Decision
Support Company(TM), today announced that it has resigned from the group,
having achieved the goals it set for itself.
"We are extremely satisfied with the direction and success of the council,"
said Wally Wrathall, president and chief executive officer. "However, as
the only member of the Council without its own OLAP (On-Line Analytical
Processing) database, our goals were different from the other members of
the Council. As an applications company, our mission was to promote the
broad awareness and acceptance of OLAP in the software industry, and get a
more robust set of database vendors involved. With the increasing interest
in this technology by more and more companies, including companies like
Oracle and Microsoft, we believe we have accomplished that goal."
DSS Applications for Multiple Databases
"As well as the awareness and acceptance of OLAP, we wanted to support
development of a common methodology for OLAP databases," explains Steve
Tonissen, senior vice president of marketing. "We wanted to be certain that
our decision support applications would be open to multiple databases, in
much the same way SQL standards insure openness in the relational world."
Comshare's strategy is to provide robust decision support applications to
its chosen industries, including Retail, Consumer Goods, Financial
Services, Utilities, Manufacturing, Energy and Services organizations.
Within an industry, many applications across various functions are
strategic. Comshare's decision application methodologies provide customers
with applications that drive competitiveness and improve profitability.
"Comshare's application focus is illustrated by our methodologies,"
continues Tonissen. "Many years of experience and our diverse customer base
have given us a deep understanding of the decision process and the needs of
our customers when developing decision support applications."
Comshare's decision application methodology, called Comshare Decision
Map(TM) (DMAP), is a result of that thorough understanding. This
methodology accurately defines the business problem at hand, the business
need, and the correct solution to the business problem. However, a powerful
methodology is only one part of a complete application solution. "It is
Comshare's unique ability to deliver `whole product' solutions that
differentiates us," explained Tonissen. "Databases themselves do not
deliver successful applications. Applications need databases, other
innovative technology (like Comshare's Detect & Alert(R) technology), and
the support mechanisms required for large, mission critical applications.
Comshare delivers high value-add to the databases through application
knowledge resident in the application servers, and through extensive
application and industry knowledge pervasive through our network of
Value-Add Consultant organizations, and our own consulting organization,."
Comshare's Application Architecture
As the council has become more productive and moved forward with its
strategy with a published API, Comshare has focused on its own strategy of
delivering high value Decision Support Applications based on the best
technology. Announced last September, Comshare's Application Architecture
(CAA) allows the company to move swiftly to the correct technology or
database for an application. The recent partnerships with Oracle and Applix
for those company's databases are testaments to that architecture.
"We have added a combination of relational and multi-dimensional database
technologies as a strategic direction for our applications," stated Dennis
Ganster, chief technology officer and senior vice president of development.
"We did this in response to a clear market demand and through technical
breakthroughs which have proven that we can deliver competitive DSS
applications on a range of more widely accepted database technology." For
this reason, and because the API is not yet in use by many database
vendors, Comshare has chosen not to implement the API in its architecture.
"The end result is that we need more than just OLAP openness. Our CAA
strategy has proven to be a faster way to achieve our goals," concluded
Ganster.
"We are proud of the role we played helping to organize and open the OLAP
world," concluded Wrathall. "It is simply time for us to allow the database
vendors to continue their work and for Comshare to focus on its
applications."
About Comshare
Comshare is The Decision Support Company. Comshare develops, markets, and
supports complete client/server decision support applications. Comshare's
software applications are designed to improve business analysis, planning,
and operations for effective decision making, enhanced competitiveness, and
improved profits. Comshare's application software is popular among major
corporations in many industries, with particular concentration in financial
services, utilities, manufacturing, energy, services, retail and consumer
goods industries. One of the top 50 independent software companies,
Comshare has over 3, 000 customers worldwide, many of which are Fortune
1000 and Financial Times Top 1000 companies. Comshare, Inc. is a Microsoft
Solution Provider.
For more information about Comshare products and services, call
1-800-922-7979 or see our home page on the World Wide Web at
http://www.comshare.com .
Comshare and Detect and Alert are registered trademarks; The Decision
Support Company, Comshare Application Architecture and Decision Map are
trademarks of Comshare, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their
respective holders.
CONTACT: Comshare | Doug Hockstad, 313/994-4800 | or | Eiler Communications
| Larry Eiler, 313/761-3399
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