UK Software firm Avellino opens its first US office as partner secures $1.5m contract

Strong growth for Avellino fuels the company's expansion into the U.S. market, while its U.S. partner, Innovative Systems, wins the largest contract-to-date for Avellino Discovery

7th October 2002, Austin, Texas, USA and Aldermaston, UK: Avellino, a privately held UK-based data integration solutions vendor, has opened its first office in the United States. Based in Austin, Texas, the office is staffed by a sales, technical and customer support team. The move is strategic to Avellino's geographic expansion plans and follows increasing US interest in the company's flagship data profiling and analysis solution, Avellino Discovery.

The company has already directly secured a number of US customers including Ford Financial & AT&T Concert and is also working in partnership in the US with customer data integration solution provider, Innovative Systems Inc. In September, Innovative Systems closed the largest contract to date for Avellino Discovery. Sold to one of the nation's leading property and casualty insurer, the contract is valued at $1,530,000.

Unlike some of its nearest competitors, Avellino is profitable. It has also seen revenues continue to grow despite the economic slowdown. Licence revenues for Avellino Discovery grew by over 100 percent in the year to June 30, 2002. The company is entirely self-financing and in September 2002, was ranked as one of Britain's fastest growing technology companies in The Sunday Times ARM Tech Track 100 on the basis of a 95% compound annual sales growth between 1999 and 2001 ( http://www.fasttrack100.com ).

Avellino Discovery is a strong contender in the emerging data profiling segment. Having won in every customer competitive bid, Avellino Discovery is now the leading data profiling product in the UK market. In an independent review carried out by UK IT analysts Bloor Research, Philip Howard states: "Avellino is currently in the enviable position of having a best-of-breed tool, at a best-of-breed price at the beginning of what should be a rapidly expanding market."

Avellino Discovery enables businesses to reduce risk, costs and timescales in expensive data integration projects; an activity central to the implementation of major business initiatives such as data warehousing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Merger & Acquisition IT consolidations. Data profiling and analysis enables accurate data integration planning. By automating this process, Avellino Discovery enables analysts to more swiftly and accurately identify and understand data structure and quality issues. They can then manage and improve data quality to leverage better and faster returns to the business.

In a recent project Ford Financial Europe saved 180 man-days of integration effort by using Avellino Discovery, and UK high street bank Abbey National reduced the time taken to analyse data by 90% and achieved a payback in three months on Avellino Discovery. In addition to Ford Financial Europe and Abbey National Bank, Avellino's UK customers include other large corporations such as BT, Lloyds TSB bank, Sun Life of Canada, Royal & Sun Alliance, Co-operative Insurance Services, Scottish & Southern Energy and the UK Ministry of Defence and others. Beyond its UK & US customers, other international customers include Old Mutual (a South African financial services firm) and Union Fenosa, a power utility based in Spain.

"As enterprises get serious about assessing the value and performance of their IT portfolios, leading enterprises also include information itself as one of their core assets to audit," said Doug Laney, vice president, META Group. "The old adage: 'You can't manage what you can't measure,' very much applies to information assets. Therefore, we have long advocated adoption of data profiling solutions for our clients, and see this discipline as one of the fastest growing components of comprehensive information."

Tony Rodriguez, CEO of Avellino said: "Our US customers and partners are very enthusiastic about Avellino Discovery because it reduces the huge complexity, timescales and costs of understanding data within complex integration and production environments. We are delighted to have opened our first U.S. office and are excited about our growing prospects in this market. We see this as an important milestone for our company's expansion."

About Avellino
Founded in 1997, Avellino is an independent provider of enterprise solutions that enable organisations to integrate and migrate data, and manage data quality accurately and effectively. Avellino has set the standard for data profiling and analysis with its flagship software product, Avellino Discovery. Launched in November 2000, Avellino Discovery is used worldwide by many blue-chip corporations, including, Abbey National, BT, Co-operative Insurance Services, EDS, Ford Financial Europe, Ministry of Defence, Old Mutual, RAC and Sun Life of Canada. Avellino's headquarters are in Aldermaston, Berkshire, UK, with a US office based in Austin, Texas and representative offices located in the Netherlands, Spain, South America and Switzerland. Avellino's website is located at http://www.avellino.com

About Avellino Discovery
Avellino Discovery automates the profiling and analysis of data to be integrated and migrated to new systems and business applications, and provides a detailed description of the data content, structure, rules and quality. Because it does not rely on data definition rules, metadata or out-of-date documentation, it is far more accurate than manual methods and eliminates the assumptions that can lead to project failure. Avellino Discovery enables organisations to accurately plan their data integration and migration projects, reduce risks associated with data quality problems, reduce cost and increase productivity of data analysis by as much as 90% over manual methods.

For further information please contact:

Derek Harris
Oast Communications
Telephone (UK) +44 (0) 1959 568512
Email: derekh@oastcommunications.com

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