DataDirect Technologies Targets SMBs with the Introduction of Connection-Based Pricing for its ODBC Drivers

Terence Cooke, vice president of international sales, atDataDirect Technologies' international headquarters said: "We arereally targeting smaller and medium-sized businesses with this changein pricing. Rather than making do with the native drivers supplied bythe database vendors, more SMBs will now find it easier tocost-justify the far superior performance of DataDirect drivers, for arelatively small increase in cost. This will also widen the market forour channel partners, too."

DataDirect Connect for ODBC eliminates complex development andconfiguration tasks and enables rapid support of new database versionsand features. Using its unique wire protocol* architecture, DataDirectConnect for ODBC eliminates the need for database client software andlibraries thereby dramatically improving performance and scalability.Incorporating the wire protocol design in the driver increases dataaccess speeds by as much as five times that of other ODBC drivers, andmakes applications much easier to deploy and maintain.

Pricing and availability

Prices are based on the number of simultaneous connections to thedatabase. Access to DataDirect's Knowledgebase and online forums willbe provided for all product licenses. DataDirect's award winning 24/7telephone support is offered to customers licensing unlimitedconnections. The current product pricing breakdown follows:

-- Five connections per server Euro 470 for the first CPU

-- 10 connections per server, Euro 865 for the first CPU

-- 25 connections per server, Euro 2140 for the first CPU

-- Unlimited connections per server, Euro 4,000 per CPU

DataDirect's tiered pricing is now available through its worldwidesales force.

DataDirect reserves the right to update the above-describedpricing from time to time.

DataDirect Technologies is an operating company of ProgressSoftware Corporation (Nasdaq:PRGS). More information can be found athttp://www.datadirect.com/connection/index.ssp.