IBM Positioned in Leaders Quadrant for Customer Data Integration Hubs

Market Wire, June, 2006

IBM today announced that Gartner, Inc. has positioned IBM in the leader quadrant in its Magic Quadrant for Customer Data Integration Hubs, 2Q06.*

IBM's customer master data management solution, IBM WebSphere Customer Center, helps companies solve their customer information management issues by creating a single view of customer information. This allows businesses in any industry to manage accurate and complete customer data within operational transactions, enabling them to put the customer at the center of their sales, service, and operational business processes.

Designed to be integrated with all business applications and process-management tools in a Service Oriented Architecture, WebSphere Customer Center is one of the most robust, fully functional and proven customer data integration (CDI) solution available today.

"Companies are getting increasingly sophisticated in how they interact with customers," said Tom Reilly, vice president, enterprise master data solutions. "Our master data management software helps organizations change how they interface with their customers based on what they know about them. WebSphere Customer Center can help tightly integrate customer resource management applications with the rest of the enterprise, and can help consolidate information among all customer facing applications. Customer data integration is fundamental to creating new customer centric processes in any organization."

According to Gartner, "By 2010, the CDI hub software market will achieve new software license revenue of more than $400 million (0.7 probability)."

Another member of IBM's Master Data Management portfolio, IBM WebSphere Product Center, was recently positioned in the visionary quadrant in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Product Information Management.**

About Gartner Magic Quadrant

The Magic Quadrant is copyrighted 2005 and 2006 by Gartner, Inc. and is reused with permission. The Magic Quadrant is a graphical representation of a marketplace at and for a specific time period. It depicts Gartner's analysis of how certain vendors measure against criteria for that marketplace, as defined by Gartner. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in the Magic Quadrant, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors placed in the "Leaders" quadrant. The Magic Quadrant is intended solely as a research tool, and is not meant to be a specific guide to action. Gartner disclaims all warranties, express or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About IBM

For more information about IBM Master Data Management Solutions, go to: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/masterdata/launch.html

* Magic Quadrant for Customer Data Integration Hubs, 2Q06, May 26, 2006. John Radcliffe.

** Magic Quadrant for Product Information Management, 2005, December 30, 2005. Andrew White.

CONTACT: Holli Haswell 512-286-3265 hhaswell@us.ibm.com