Golden Gate Capital Purchases DataDirect Technologies Division From Merant

Business Wire, Nov 12, 2001

Business Editors

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 12, 2001

Golden Gate Capital, a private equity fund based in San Francisco, California announced today the purchase of the DataDirect Technologies division of Merant, PLC (London Stock Exchange:MRN; Nasdaq:MRNT).

DataDirect is the leader in the data connectivity segment of the rapidly growing middleware market. The company's products enable software applications running on diverse environments such as .NET, Java and Legacy to seamlessly communicate with heterogeneous data sources. DataDirect's exclusive partnerships with Sun, Microsoft, IBM and other leading database vendors enable the company to offer the industry's best components for data connectivity with its J2EE, JDBC and ODBC product lines. DataDirect's products help customers drive their sales by: 1) bringing products to market faster; 2) supporting application compatibility with additional databases; 3) re-focusing programming resources away from drivers to core software development issues; and 4) providing reliable and scalable connectivity with unparalleled performance. The company has over 160 employees and fiscal year 2001 revenues of approximately $46 million.

Edward Peters, DataDirect's Chief Executive Officer, states: "DataDirect Technologies is based on an extremely solid foundation established through working with hundreds of ISV partners and end users. With our market leadership in connectivity, our healthy financial footing and our strong vision for the future, we are well positioned to provide even greater focus to our customers and deliver on our core competency -- connectivity components."

Sally Hudson, Research Manager for eBusiness Software at IDC, comments: "We've been tracking DataDirect for years, and they have always been a leading vendor in the data connectivity market. This transaction is a catalytic event for the industry as it now enables DataDirect Technologies to completely focus on driving the connectivity market through standards and innovation, which will benefit their customers and the market overall."

"We are extremely excited about this transaction," said David Dominik, a Managing Director of Golden Gate Capital. "The company's products, which are used by over 4.5 million users and hundreds of software vendors worldwide, make it the clear leader in the data connectivity space. Moreover, we believe its strong reputation and deep customer relationships will enable it to extend its leadership in the ODBC market into the rapidly growing Java segment."

About the investors: Golden Gate Capital is a San Francisco-based private equity firm with approximately $700 million of capital under management. Golden Gate Capital's strategy is to partner with exceptional management teams to pursue change-intensive, growth investments in companies that are exploiting the forces of change in technology and the broader economy.