Merant Addresses Change Management Needs of Retail Industry

Business Wire, March 10, 2003

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

HILLSBORO, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 10, 2003

Best Buy, Borders, CVS, The Home Depot, Ross Stores, Spiegel and

Staples Among Retailers Already Benefiting From Merant's Solutions

Merant (Nasdaq:MRNT) (LSE:MRN), a leading provider of software and services that deliver flexible control of code, content and other business-critical assets, today announced several customer wins in the retail industry, including Best Buy Co., Inc., CVS Corp., Borders, The Home Depot, Ross Stores, Inc., Spiegel and Staples.

Ideal for managing modifications to individual applications, complex application networks and the turnover from development to production, Merant's flexible, comprehensive enterprise change management solutions increase retailer competitiveness and revenue, reduce expenses and minimize risk.

"Our products are well suited to the retail market given their inherent flexibility and ability to handle complex application infrastructure," commented James Rogers, vice president of product marketing at Merant. "And with dozens of large retailers in our customer base, we have established a solid track record of success and demonstrated an obvious commitment to addressing the unique needs of this industry. We look forward to building on this momentum, and will continue refining our technology to help even more retailers across the globe."

Retailing is a software and data intensive industry with powerful applications supporting many core business areas, including merchandising, warehouse management, customer relationship management and supply chain management. To facilitate these business-critical operations, most large retailers use a combination of packaged and in-house developed applications. These applications are then often extensively customized not only to meet the unique needs of the retailer but also to ensure that they work together. Change management solutions are essential to maintaining the integrity of individual applications as well as the complex "networks" created by so many integrated, interdependent applications.

In addition to offering the industry's most comprehensive change management for individual development projects and applications, Merant's solutions are uniquely able to deliver change management for complex application networks. Merant's powerful line of products includes PVCS Dimensions(TM), the industry's most flexible and comprehensive enterprise change management platform; PVCS Professional(TM), an innovative software suite that enables project teams to cost-effectively automate, accelerate and manage development and business projects; and Merant Collage(TM), an enterprise-class Web content management solution that allows companies to quickly and cost-effectively design, create, deploy and manage the code and content of Internet, extranet and intranet initiatives.

Merant's products also help retailers manage the turnover from development to production, ensuring that software running on production systems is not corrupted by uncontrolled changes. The company's solutions prohibit any unauthorized changes to production code, and make sure software runs through its complete lifecycle before being released to production, dramatically reducing the likelihood of failure. Moreover, by automatically migrating code from development to test to production, Merant's solutions expedite the entire process and eliminate costly errors commonly associated with manual migration.

About PVCS Dimensions

Delivering unsurpassed scalability and flexibility, Merant's PVCS Dimensions is the industry's first comprehensive change management platform for automating development processes, business rules and asset change practices. Dimensions provides, in a single change management framework, comprehensive process control, versioning, baseline management, issue management, release management, build management and workflow management. Scalable enough to address the needs of teams of all sizes, Dimensions can be rapidly implemented, ensuring the protection and management of all enterprise assets. With process control that can be easily customized to fit agile or traditional methodologies, or modeled on specific needs, Dimensions quickly simplifies change management across an entire organization.

About PVCS Professional

Merant's PVCS Professional enables project teams to cost-effectively automate, accelerate and manage development and business projects. The PVCS Professional suite is comprised of PVCS Version Manager(TM), one of the most widely adopted solutions for version control in team development environments; PVCS Tracker(TM), a powerful solution for capturing managing and communicating changes, issues and tasks; and PVCS Configuration Builder(TM), which is designed to ensure applications are built in a reproducible, reliable manner.

About Merant Collage

Merant Collage is an enterprise-class Web content management solution that enables organizations to quickly and cost-effectively design, create, deploy and manage the code and content of Internet, extranet and intranet initiatives. In one, easy-to-use, scalable solution, Merant Collage provides a powerful deployment engine and many built-in productivity features that get Web infrastructures up and running quickly, while providing a secure, user-friendly environment for ongoing content contributions. Collage delivers the industry's lowest total cost of ownership as well as the only seamless integration with SCM solutions.