PRESS:INFORMIX/AMDAHL PERFORMANCE BENCHMARK

INFORMIX/AMDAHL PERFORMANCE BENCHMARK DEMONSTRATES ENTERPRISE SCALABILITY FOR WINDOWS NT-BASED DECISION SUPPORT Industry Benchmark Result Sets Standard For Windows NT Data Marts MENLO PARK, Calif. - August 13, 1997 - Informix Software, Inc. (NASDAQ:IFMX), the leading provider of innovative database technology, today demonstrated the power and scalability of INFORMIX-OnLine Extended Parallel Server (OnLine XPS), running on a single node Windows NT Amdahl-based server, by announcing breakthrough performance for the Transaction Processing Performance Council Benchmark D (TPC-D) 30 gigabyte (GB) benchmark. As the first industry-standard benchmark for Windows NT at 30 GB, the Informix and Amdahl TPC-D power metric of 518.8 QppD@ 30 GB sets an impressive performance standard for decision support system (DSS) applications in this range. The result, following the recently announced Informix and Amdahl performance record of 460.8 QppD@100 GB run on an identical hardware/software configuration, proves that Enterprise customers can begin with small data mart implementations and scale their data warehouse applications with Informix, without losing critical performance. These results were both run with INFORMIX-OnLine XPS Database on the Amdahl EnVista FS/R and the high-performance LVS 4500 Storage System. "The sweet spot of the NT market today is between 10 GB and 30 GB of data, with the larger NT data marts and warehouses incorporating 100 GB and beyond," said Robert Craig, director, Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Service, Hurwitz Group, Inc. "Bringing performance and scalability to decision support applications on existing hardware, coupled with the ability to maintain performance as the data grows, is critical to customers serious about implementing small to mid-range data marts and data warehouses on NT." "Informix's newest TPC-D result with Amdahl demonstrates again that OnLine XPS provides the Enterprise performance and scalability required by data mart and data warehouse customers on NT and UNIX," said Brett Bachman, vice president and general manager of Enterprise Products at Informix. "The bottom line is that, with Informix, customers can deliver business information to decision makers today, and be assured that they can address the dramatic growth in data and users typical in these systems while maintaining performance." This TPC-D benchmark, which also yielded results of $1,606/QphD@30GB and 200.1 QthD@ 30 GB, was based on an EnVista FS/R Server configured with four 200 MHz Pentium Pro processors, each with 512KB cache, 2-GB of memory, using the INFORMIX-Online Extended Parallel Server 8.20TC1 . The 30 GB TPC-D database was implemented using the Amdahl LVS 4500 Storage System that, in fact, contained several hundred gigabytes of data. Following are comparable test results as of 08/12/97. Vendor Database Vers. Power (QppD) Throughput (QthD) Price/Perf ($/QphD) Avail. Amdahl Informix 8.2 518.8@ 30 GB 200.1 @ 30 GB $1606@ 30 GB 1/1/98 Amdahl Informix 8.2 460.8@100 GB 152.4@100 GB $2308@ 100 GB 1/1/98 "Today's enterprise customers are developing multi-tiered decision support environments, blending operational systems on OS/390, with data warehouses on UNIX, to data marts on Windows NT," said Charles Foley, vice president of Systems Marketing for Amdahl. "Across all of these, continuous availability, interoperability, and immediate response are required. Our partnership with Informix makes this a reality, as demonstrated by this test." About the Benchmark The Transaction Processing Performance Council is an independent organization formed by member companies across the computer industry.The TPC-D benchmark examines system performance in a decision support workload. It differs from OLTP benchmarks in testing system performance in workloads with few transactions involving a large amount of data and more complex query statements. The three of the five primary metrics are: Query Processing Performance (QppD) which measures raw query execution when all available resources are concentrated on a single query; Query Throughput (QthD) meant to show the systems ability to process concurrent queries; and Queries Per Hour ($/QphD) a measure of price performance calculated dividing 5-year cost of ownership by the composite of the two performance metrics. About Informix Informix Software, based in Menlo Park, California, provides innovative database technology that enables the world=92s leading corporations to manage and grow their businesses. Informix is widely recognized as the technology leader for corporate computing environments, ranging from workgroups to very large OLTP and data warehouse applications. Informix's database servers, application development tools, superior customer service, and strong partnerships enable the company to be at the forefront of many leading-edge information technology solution areas. More information about Informix is available via the World Wide Web at http://www.informix.com. About Amdahl Amdahl Corporation (AMEX: AMH) provides integrated enterprise computing solutions designed to meet the needs of the leading, most compute-intensive environments around the world. Amdahl has more than two decades of experience with large-scale computing solutions and client/server technology. The company supports heterogeneous architectures found in mission-critical customer environments that blend Windows NT, MVS, and UNIX operating systems. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Amdahl combines hardware and software products and services methods with best-of-breed offerings to create customized solutions that help clients gain a competitive advantage in their industries.