Compuware Expands Application Performance Management Suite with Acquisition of Optimal Networks' Products

FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich. -- July 25, 2000 -- Compuware Corporation (NASDAQ:CPWR) and Optimal Networks Corporation (Optimal) announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement for Compuware to acquire substantially all the assets and certain liabilities of Optimal, an award-winning developer of e-business performance measurement tools. The addition of Optimal's products, combined with the recent acquisition of the software products of CACI Products Company, strengthens Compuware's EcoSYSTEMS product line, particularly its ability to notify, troubleshoot and prevent application performance problems across the e-business and enterprise infrastructure.

Unlike traditional performance management solutions that provide only limited information, EcoSYSTEMS measures performance across the enterprise in historical, real and predictive time frames. The addition of Optimal's products bolsters Compuware's ability to troubleshoot problems within the application, network or servers before deployment and while in production.

"There exists little tolerance for poor performing e-commerce applications, therefore, it is no longer acceptable to attempt discovery and correction of infrastructure problems after application deployment," said Richard L. Ptak, Vice President, Hurwitz Group. "Successful organizations must discover and root out any application bottlenecks before deployment in pre-production environments. Forward looking e-commerce application developers are searching for an integrated solution with the ability to troubleshoot, before deployment, for problems that may lurk within the application, network, or servers."

Integration with EcoSYSTEMS Suite

In production environments, Optimal's products complement EcoSYSTEMS' application troubleshooting capabilities. Application managers and IT staff will use EcoSCOPE to identify the location, time and nature of performance problems and use Optimal Application Vantage and EcoTOOLS for a "microscope" view to identify and fix the root cause of problems. Optimal Application Preview provides WAN provisioning and is used by IT professionals for capacity planning.

Prior to application deployment, EcoSYSTEMS offers the most complete, in-depth solution for analyzing performance of multi-tier e-business application transactions. Application Expert, Optimal's market- leading transaction analysis product, profiles application performance, predicts end-user response times and troubleshoots potential performance slowdowns down to the code level with its thread analysis for granular decoding. Application Expert, together with data from EcoSCOPE and EcoTOOLS, will provide IT professionals with a total solution to predict network bottlenecks, application scalability and server usage, using real data captured from existing networks.

"Pre-production troubleshooting is necessary to successfully ensure peak application performance and keep up with the speed of e-business," said Doug Turner, Compuware Vice President, Product Management. "Our acquisition of Optimal Networks demonstrates Compuware's belief in the strategic significance of managing the application performance demands of organizations requiring the kind of complete performance solution we are able to offer--identifying an application problem, locating and troubleshooting the problem and planning for future needs to maintain service levels."

Compuware Corporation

With fiscal 2000 revenues of more than $2.2 billion, Compuware is a world leader in the practical implementation of enterprise and e-commerce solutions. Compuware software products and professional services help 14,000 of the world's largest corporations more efficiently maintain and enhance their most critical business applications. Compuware products and services improve quality, lower costs and increase the speed at which systems can be developed, implemented and supported, providing an immediate and measurable return on information technology investments. Compuware employs more than 15,000 information technology professionals worldwide. For more information about Compuware, please contact the corporate offices at 800-521-9353. You may also visit Compuware on the World Wide Web at http://www.compuware.com.