D&B’s Purisma Acquisition Excites CDI/MDM Industry

Independent Research Analysts Predict Acquisition Could “Redefine the CDI-MDM Market”

Redwood City, CA – Dec. 18, 2007 – Recent reports from independent research analysts illuminate the impact of D&B’s (NYSE: DNB; http://www.dnb.com) acquisition of Purisma™, which was announced on November 5, 2007. Reports by Aaron Zornes of the CDI/MDM Institute and Forrester’s R. “Ray” Wang see the merger as significantly and positively changing the customer data integration (CDI) and master data management (MDM) technology landscape, positioning D&B to broaden its portfolio and enabling Purisma to expand its market reach.

“We’re very excited about the synergies of this merger, and we’re gratified to have our enthusiasm validated by customers and the research analyst community,” said Pete Daffern, CEO and chairman of Purisma.” As CDI and MDM continue to become a necessity for businesses, our relationship with D&B will make it far easier for these business to provide customers with the perfect combination of data and technology that simplifies the integration of their D&B data with their internal systems.”

CDI/MDM Institute Weighs In
Purisma offers enterprise-ready CDI and MDM solutions that can be deployed rapidly and evolve to meet a multitude of business challenges over time. In “D&B Moves into MDM Mainstream: D&B Pounces on MDM Partner Purisma to Accelerate Market Delivery of ‘Holistic’ Master Data,” analyst Aaron Zornes writes, “This merger has the potential to redefine the CDI-MDM market because every MDM implementation needs and will continue to need an external reference data source that can be trusted.” 

Zornes also notes the significance of Purisma’s data governance capabilities. “Purisma was one of only several vendors making headway in this key area. In addition to shoring up D&B’s CDI-MDM product offering family, we expect Purisma’s fledgling data governance capabilities to increasingly become a market differentiator in a cluttered and cacophonous market.” Zornes also expects Purisma to provide data governance capabilities that complement IBM, Oracle, and SAP MDM solutions.

For customers, Zornes writes that “it is highly likely that the Purisma Data Hub will gain ‘insider status’ and leverage to a better degree integration with the D&B data products to create a new class of MDM hubs – a class of hub focused on addressing the volatility of consumer and business master data. To give it an interim name while the D&B marketing minds test their slogos, let’s call this ‘Just in Time’ master data.”

Independent Research Firm Clarifies Customer Benefits
In a November 2007 Forrester report, “D&B’s Acquisition of Purisma Signals Market Shift,” Ray Wang writes that the “acquisition will introduce a more robust customer hub solution into D&B’s packaged software portfolio that could augment strong business-to-business (B2B) capabilities, improve internationalization, deliver hierarchy management, and support data stewardship processes. Existing D&B customers should benefit from stronger customer hub tools than previously offered.”

Wang also notes that the acquisition “validates Purisma’s technology while removing viability concerns” and “opens the door to bringing other interdependent master data into the D&B universe.”

Acknowledging that “customers and prospects stand to benefit from this complementary acquisition once D&B fully integrates the Purisma capabilities,” Wang recommends that “existing D&B customers should consider the Purisma solution,” and “existing Purisma customers should discuss enterprise contracts with D&B.”

“We use Purisma’s data hub in conjunction with our D&B database to ensure that our call-center representatives have accurate customer records to field the more than 15,000 calls per day,” said Doug LaVelle, Director, Business Relationship Management Corporate Express, one of the world’s largest business-to-business suppliers of essential office and computer products and services. “The formal merger of the two companies increases our confidence that we will see even better integration and more valuable CDI-MDM solution offerings in the future.”

About D&B
D&B (NYSE:DNB) is the world’s leading source of commercial information and insight on businesses, enabling companies to Decide with Confidence(R) for over 165 years. D&B’s global commercial database contains more than 115 million business records. The database is enhanced by D&B’s proprietary DUNSRight(R) Quality Process, which provides our customers with quality business information. This quality information is the foundation of our global solutions that customers rely on to make critical business decisions.
D&B provides customers with four solution sets, which meet a diverse set of customer needs globally. Customers use D&B Risk Management Solutions(TM) to mitigate credit risk, increase cash flow and drive increased profitability; D&B Sales & Marketing Solutions(TM) to increase revenue from new and existing customers; D&B E-Business Solutions(TM) to convert prospects into clients faster by enabling business professionals to research companies, executives and industries; and D&B Supply Management Solutions(TM) to increase cash by generating ongoing savings from our customers’ suppliers and by protecting our customers from serious financial, operational and regulatory risk. For more information, please visit http://www.dnb.com.
The Purisma Data Hub and MyData software platforms deliver solutions-driven master data management and customer data integration (MDM-CDI) for enterprises. With Purisma Data Hub companies can, for the first time, implement highly accurate MDM-CDI projects to respond to specific business solution challenges without the time, cost, complexity, or disruptions of conventional MDM-CDI solutions. For more information, please visit http://www.purisma.com.