IBM Smokes Oracle in Race for Windows 2000 Certification; DB2 Universal Database Becomes First Database Certified For Windows 2000

Business Wire, July 31, 2000

Technology Editors

SOMERS, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 29, 2000

IBM today announced it became the first database vendor certified on the Windows 2000 platform.

Beating Oracle and Microsoft to the punch, today's announcement further demonstrates IBM's technology leadership versus its competitors. The certification means DB2 Universal Database has passed a tightly controlled, independently verified testing process and is certified to make maximum use of the wealth of features in the Windows 2000 operating system. Customers benefit from a more robust,self-repairing installation procedure and enhanced network security and accessibility.

According to Gartner Group, using compliant Windows 2000 applications, customers can increase the stability of their systems and lower their total cost of ownership.

Further proof of IBM's database leadership over its competitors include:

-- IBM continues to deliver industry leading technology on time or before
schedule, at typically one third the price of Oracle's database.

-- IBM, Intel and Microsoft recently announced the world's fastest server,
recording performance levels that triple the results of Oracle running on a Sun
Microsystems cluster, at one-third the price. IBM Netfinity and DB2 Universal
Database, Intel(R) Pentium(R) III Xeon(TM) Processors, and Microsoft's Windows
2000 Delivered 440,879 Transactions Per Minute.

-- DB2 Universal Database integrates breakthrough technologies, not

found in Oracle's standard packages. These include integrated XML

capabilities for advanced B2B transactions, advanced search

functionality for high-speed text searches (as much as 10 times

faster than traditional databases), and the first implementation

of the industry's new SQL standard for improved development cycles

by as much as 40 percent.

-- IBM now has more than 10,000 business partners and 6,500

applications built on DB2. In the past year, leading application

developers including Siebel, SAP, i2, Ariba and PeopleSoft have

chosen DB2 over Oracle as their standard software development

platform.

TPC-C is copyrighted by Transaction Processing Performance Council (www.tpc.org). Delivered 440,879 Transactions Per Minute, US$32.28 price/tpmC, system available on December 7, 2000.