PRESS: INFORMIX COMPLETES ACQUISITION OF ILLUSTRA INFORMATION

INFORMIX COMPLETES ACQUISITION OF ILLUSTRA INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES Companies to Provide First Database For Managing Content-Rich Data MENLO PARK, Calif. (February 16, 1996) - Informix Corporation. (NADSAQ:IFMX), the leading provider of parallel processing database technology, today announced that it has completed the acquisition of Illustra Information Technologies, Inc. Illustra is a leading supplier of dynamic content management database software and tools for managing complex data in the Internet, multimedia/entertainment, financial services, earth sciences, and other markets. With the acquisition, Illustra becomes a wholly-owned subsidiary of Informix Corporation. Informix will issue approximately 12.6 million shares of Informix common stock to acquire all outstanding shares of Illustra. An additional 2.4 million Informix shares have been reserved for issuance in connection with the assumption of Illustra's outstanding stock options. Informix currently has approximately 135 million shares of stock outstanding. The transaction was accounted for as a tax free pooling of interests. The acquisition will enable Informix to integrate Illustra's dynamic content management system, including existing DataBlade(R) modules, into its core parallel database technology, Dynamic Scalable Architecture (DSA). The combined technologies will result in the INFORMIX-Universal Server scheduled to ship in the fourth quarter of 1996. Many analysts believe that Universal Server will give Informix a significant market advantage over competing database vendors. Universal Server will be the first of a completely new class of information management systems designed to address customer demand for a high-performance, scalable and fully integrated database system that can manage ALL information assets -- including numbers, images, maps, sound, video, Web pages, and text as well as any other user-defined, rich data types. (Editors Note: For more information on Universal Server see Informix Unveils Product Strategy For Universal Server, news announcement dated December 20, 1995) "With this acquisition, we are better positioned than any other database vendor to capture the expanding market of content management, especially in the Web space," said Phil White, chairman and CEO, Informix. "Universal Server will be the first database to combine scalable OLTP and infinite extensibility in a single product, enabling customers to more effectively manage all types of data without compromising performance." About Illustra Headquartered in Oakland, Calif., Illustra Information Technologies, Inc. is the leading worldwide supplier of content management systems and tools for applications in multimedia and entertainment, digital media publishing, and financial services. The company's flagship product, the Illustra Server, allows users to store, manage, and analyze complex multimedia data such as audio, video, and images, in a single database, along with traditional characters and numbers. The company was founded in 1992. For more information on the company and Illustra's products, please visit http://www.illustra.com. About Informix Informix Software, Inc., the operating subsidiary of Informix Corporation, is the leading supplier of high performance, parallel processing database technology for open systems. Informix products also include application development tools for creating client/server production applications, decision support systems, and ad-hoc query interfaces, and connectivity software that allows information to be shared transparently from PCs to mainframes within the corporate computing environment. Informix's corporate headquarters is based in Menlo Park, California. More information about Informix is available via the World Wide Web: http://www.informix.com. ###