PRESS - Informix to Provide New RDBMS for Mercantile Mutual

Informix to Provide New RDBMS for Mercantile Mutual Sydney, Australia. 7 July 1995 Australian Insurer Signs 1500 User Corporate Agreement Informix Software Pty Ltd, the leading provider of parallel processing database technology, announced today that Mercantile Mutual, one of Australia's leading insurance and financial services groups, has selected INFORMIX-OnLine Dynamic Server(TM) as its corporate database platform to support the development of major strategic systems in a deal worth over A$1 million. Key to Mercantile Mutual's Information Technology strategy is the establishment of a new Client Information System based on an enterprise-level open systems platform. Informix Wins Comprehensive Evaluation After an extensive evaluation of open systems databases, Mercantile Mutual selected Informix's OnLine Dynamic Server for its new corporate open systems platforms. Mercantile Mutual first evaluated all major open systems RDBMSs and shortlisted two vendors. Over a three month period, Mercantile Mutual conducted a comprehensive program of functionality and performance tests on these shortlisted products. According to Ian Macalpine, Mercantile Mutual's technology manager, "Informix was the clear winner. Informix's strong architecture with its inherent parallelism provides excellent performance and scalability. Systems management and the issues of backup, recovery and integrity were first rate." Apart from Informix's substantial performance advantage provided by its Dynamic Scalable Architecture, Mr Macalpine was impressed by Informix's distinct business focus. "Informix concentrates on three things: database management systems, tools and partnerships" he said. "They have a clear understanding of what is needed to succeed in all three areas." Mercantile Mutual Purchases Corporate Agreement The agreement between Informix and Mercantile Mutual enables Informix's database technology to be used by all 1500 staff within the Mercantile Mutual group. The agreement enables Mercantile Mutual to develop a range of new applications which can then be deployed on both central corporate enterprise-level servers as well as on departmental and workgroup installations. The details of the financial arrangements have not been released in full, but the deal is conservatively estimated to be worth over A$1 million over the coming years. "This is becoming an increasingly typical type of sale for Informix not only in Australia but globally," commented Steve Dolan, Director of Marketing, Australia & New Zealand. "Large organizations are finding that the scalability of our DSA architecture enables them to deploy systems on a wide range of hardware platforms without compromising performance. We are seeing excellent levels of scalability from uniprocessors in a workgroup setting, to SMP systems supporting enterprise-level OLTP systems, to MPP systems supporting extremely large data warehouses." Mercantile Mutual Plans for New Client Information System At present, Mercantile Mutual offers a wide range of financial, insurance, investment and banking services through various companies and divisions within the group. Mr. Peter Zappert, Group IT Manager at Mercantile Mutual, explained, "Our challenge is to continue to provide excellence of administration in each of our specialist areas while developing an integrated product and service relationship with our customers. We were convinced that the flexibility needed to achieve this would be best provided in an open systems environment." In order to improve its service to its customers and reduce IT operating expenses on a per policy basis, Mercantile Mutual is establishing a Client Information System. This new system will recognize the total relationship a client has with Mercantile Mutual by enabling access to information about the full range of products and services provided to customers through one central database. As well as improving customer service levels, Mercantile Mutual expects to see major benefits from the Client Information System in areas such as the reduction of multiple mailings from different areas within the group, easier access to products and services, and improved service to their intermediaries. About Mercantile Mutual Mercantile Mutual is one of Australia's leading insurance and financial services groups with over A$7 billion in funds under management, A$1.3 billion in premium income and 1500 staff. It is a key member of one of the largest financial services groups in the world, the ING Group, which has over A$300 billion in assets and operates in more than 50 countries with over 50,000 staff. About Informix Informix Software is the leading supplier of high performance, parallel processing database technology for open systems. The company's database servers are the number one choice of computer hardware manufacturers for publishing Transaction Processing Council (TPC) benchmarks for UNIX-based 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. In Australia, Informix has offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Brisbane and Perth. Informix's New Zealand offices are located in Wellington and Auckland. Informix is available on the Worldwide Web by contacting: http://www.informix.com/ INFORMIX is a registered trademark and OnLine Dynamic Server and NewEra are trademarks of Informix Software, Inc. All other names indicated by (C) or (TM) are registered trademarks of their respective manufacturer. -- %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% William Daul Advanced Support INFORMIX SOFTWARE INC. 4100 Bohannon Dr. (415) 926-6488 - wk Menlo Park, CA. 94025 uunet!infmx!billd or billd@informix.com