CAST is Endorsed by Analysts as Leader of the Application Mining Market

Business Wire, July 23, 2001

Business Editors

PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 23, 2001

Organizations must adapt their software applications more rapidly than ever before, despite the growing complexity of technologies and the shortage of IT professionals. As a result, major IT analysts are acknowledging Application Mining as an answer to the "software complexity crisis." Both the Gartner and Giga analyst groups see CAST (EuroNM:7289) as the leader in the Application Mining for distributed and Internet based applications.

Application Mining: A Rapidly Growing Market

According to D. Vecchio, a research director at Gartner, "between 2001 and 2004, the market for legacy understanding tools is estimated to be approximately $200 Million to $250 Million over the next 12 months growing at 25 percent rate to $400 million by 2004," from Gartner Group Research Note M-12-894 "Legacy Understanding Magic Quadrant: Knowledge for eBusiness."

Available from CAST at www.castsoftware.com or from Gartner, to Gartners' subscribers.

The total market for "application life cycle management tools" such as modeling, test, configuration management and application mining tools represents around $4 billion. At a projected 10% of this market, Application Mining is manifesting itself as a major trend in software development.

CAST: The Acknowledged Leader in Distributed and Internet Application Analysis

In March 2001, while presenting a matrix analysis of the legacy understanding market, Gartner Group listed CAST in the leaders' quadrant, based upon the company's vision and its ability to execute its development plan. CAST is the only software vendor in this quadrant to cover distributed systems and Internet-based applications.

In June 2000, Giga Information Group published research declaring that companies that want to improve, re-develop, explore or enlarge existing web or client/server applications written in Power Builder, Visual Basic, Java or Internet scripting languages should consider Application Mining technology.

See Giga Information Group's research: "Application Analysis and Mining Tools: Big Payback Potential."

The entire report, written by Stephanie Moore, is available on www.castsoftware.com or through Giga Group services at www.gigaweb.com.

What is Application Mining?

CAST's Application Mining Suite effortlessly provides developers, DBAs and project managers with invaluable information about the internal structure of the applications they are implementing code modification within. As opposed to manually digging into the code to gain an understanding about its interdependencies and the effects that a change to the code will have on the application, software agents called analyzers automatically analyze the code swiftly and thoroughly. The results of this automated analysis are then stored in an SQL database, which forms a data warehouse of the applications called the "Application Warehouse"; no effort on the part of programmers is required. This information can then be accessed through graphical views as well as through direct SQL queries to the "Application Warehouse."

The result of more than ten years of R&D into the analysis of programming languages, CAST's technology covers the main languages used in distributed and Internet applications: Visual Basic, Java, Power Builder, Internet scripting languages and the various types of SQL used in the main RDBMS (Oracle, Microsoft, Sybase and soon DB2).

About CAST

CAST -- Pioneer and world leader of Application Mining -- is headquartered in France and is quoted on the EuroNM in Paris (7289). CAST's software revenue grew by 73% in 2000, reaching 24.8 M Euro. More than 75% of revenue is international and the 250 strong workforce is distributed among nine major cities in Europe and four in the U.S. (San Francisco, New York, D.C. and Chicago). CAST has 1,800 customers and their technology is valued by major software vendors such as Microsoft, Oracle, or Rational and by IT Analysts such as Gartner, Giga, or IDC. For more information visit the CAST website at www.castsoftware.com.