Comshare to Roll Out Major Release of its Web-based Business-Intelligence Platform for Custom Software Applications

Comshare will deliver the most comprehensive set of tools to easily develop BI applications

Phoenix, Arizona, September 11, 2000 -- Comshare® Inc. (Nasdaq: CSRE) announced today at its 18th Annual Users Conference held this year in Phoenix, Ariz., that version 4.0 of its acclaimed business intelligence (BI) software platform, known as Comshare Decision™, is in its final beta testing phase, and its commercial release is planned for late October. Comshare is the leader in Web-based solutions for management planning and control (MPC), which comprises planning, budgeting, financial data consolidation, reporting and analysis. Decision is an open, extensible, and Web-based software platform that provides advanced user-centric reporting and analysis capabilities out of the box for delivering OLAP data. Decision makes making sense of business easy and insightful, reducing time-consuming and tedious searching by finding and alerting users to key issues buried within their data. Comshare Decision can be customized to conform to a variety of customer requirements, and it has been applied at hundreds of companies around the world for sales analysis, customer data analysis, performance measurement, and customer profitability analysis.

Comshare’s BI platform gives users highly effective ways to obtain all the information they need for reporting and analysis. “Users will be able to more easily access a variety of business information for ad hoc reporting, multidimensional analysis, visualization of data across large hierarchies, and advanced exception alerting that proactively notifies users of problem areas,” said Dennis Ganster, Comshare president and CEO. “With Decision 4.0, users will be able to link to applications and data sources using only a Java-enabled Internet browser. Unlike any product available on the market today, Decision will deliver superior functionality, interactivity, and analytic capability in a fully Web-based solution with an open architecture.”

A Superior Web-based Platform for Custom Applications
As Comshare’s BI platform, Decision exploits Web technology, supports multiple data sources, includes greatly enhanced human factors and end-user functionality, features outstanding analytical capabilities, and includes more advanced data visualization techniques that make it a truly superior MPC solution for the unique, specialized OLAP solutions required by analysts, managers, and executives.

Comshare Decision 4.0 will deliver Java-based Web applications with the same functionality found in client/server solutions, including exception alerting and reporting, personal calculations, drill down, sorting, writing data back to the central database, charting, and even customizable Web entry points for individual users. This design fully will exploit Microsoft .NET platform, which Microsoft Corp. has said that it will take computing and communications far beyond the one-way Web to a rich, collaborative, interactive environment. Comshare Decision 4.0 will support Microsoft SQL Server and SQL Server 2000 Analysis Services, IBM DB2 Universal Database and DB2 OLAP Server, Oracle 8i or better, and Hyperion Essbase.

Broad User Base
Decision has proven to be an effective solution for a wide range of user needs. Power users get the benefits of a rich analysis environment, while casual users benefit from packaged reporting functions. All users access the same applications and consistent data across the enterprise, regardless of location. Hundreds of companies have invested in Comshare Decision, including Aristar Management Inc., BMW Manufacturing, Credit Agricole AMT, Dean Medical Center, MasterCard International, Memtek Products Inc., Nova Chemicals Ltd., Philips Components, Pinderfield, Pontefract NHS Trust, Ralston Purina Company, Reliance Electric, Royal Bank of Scotland, Société Général, and Telia (Swedish Telecom).

About Comshare
Comshare Inc. is the leading provider of e-business software applications for management planning and control (MPC), which comprises planning, budgeting, financial consolidation, management reporting and analysis. Comshare’s MPC applications deliver business-critical information over the Web that can be used to make sound planning and management decisions. In business for nearly 35 years, Comshare is one of the top independent software companies, with customers around the world, many of which are Fortune 500 and Financial Times Top 1000 companies. Comshare is a Microsoft Data Warehousing Alliance Partner, an IBM Business Partner, an Oracle Business Alliance Partner, and an Hyperion Alliance Partner. For more information on Comshare, call 1-800-922-7979, send e-mail to info@comshare.com or visit Comshare’s Web site at www.comshare.com.

CONTACTS:
Pete Smudde
Director, Corporate Communications
734-769-8742
psmudde@comshare.com

Comshare® is a registered trademark of Comshare Inc. Comshare Decision™ is a trademark of Comshare Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.