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Attachmate and WRQ Merger Closes: AttachmateWRQ Outlines Strategic Plans

Multi-Host Access and Integration Company Delivers Expanded Business Value and Security to Customers Worldwide

An investment group led by Golden Gate Capital, Francisco Partners and Thoma Cressey Equity Partners announced on October 3rd that it has completed the merger of Attachmate Corp., of Bellevue, Wash. and WRQ, Inc. of Seattle. The combined company, AttachmateWRQ, emerges as a leader in multi-host access and integration, with government-certified Secure Shell (SSH) security expertise. The company now has over 40,000 customers with products that are installed on over 16 million desktops in nearly 60 countries.

The merger of these two market leaders results in new and continued benefits for customers, including the best multi-host technology from a single provider, award-winning support, the delivery of products and services by a larger and even more skilled team of technology experts and an aggressively funded AttachmateWRQ.

“The technical support people at AttachmateWRQ are quick, smart and committed — the ultimate professionals,” said Michael D. Ferger, vice president, Network Computing Systems, at M&T Bank, an AttachmateWRQ EXTRA! customer. “It's clear that the merger of Attachmate and WRQ has only strengthened the company's ability to provide high quality support to their customers.”

“Many factors are propelling us forward, including our terrific customer base, our product technology that offers superior breadth and depth of platform coverage, and a talented workforce,” said Jeff Hawn, chairman, CEO and president of AttachmateWRQ. “But the real driver is our dedication to customers. We are committed to working closely with our customers to ensure that we continue, and even strengthen the attributes that they care about: delivering the highest quality products, providing world class support and being easy to do business with.”

AttachmateWRQ also has strong alliances with a large number of technology providers, enabling the company to deliver even more value to its customers. “In addition to being veterans in the software market, our companies share a customer-first mindset, a dedication to innovation and a proven record of delivering software that enables customers to extend the use of existing IT investments and adopt valuable new technologies to improve their businesses,” said Murray Gordon, director of technology at Cambar Software. “Verastream is a perfect example of how our companies partner to provide customers with solutions to key business problems.”

AttachmateWRQ Outlines Strategic Plans
The company today also outlined strategic plans for delivering greater business value to its customers and other companies which rely on IBM-, HP-, Unisys-, Digital-, and Unix-based systems to run their most important business functions.

AttachmateWRQ's chief strategy is to leverage its expanded expertise, capacity, product portfolio and financial resources to help organizations extend, manage and secure their host assets.

The company's plans also include reinforcing its channel and sales force, increasing collaboration with technology and service partners, and expanding its global reach and focus on key vertical markets. In addition, AttachmateWRQ will continue to invest heavily in research and development (R&D) as well as pursue acquisitions to meet the ongoing needs of its global customers.

The company is delivering increased business value to the market and its customers in three key areas:

Multi-Host Access
AttachmateWRQ products and services extend host resources swiftly and securely, while enabling the adoption of new platforms. These solutions permit access and integration projects to be implemented in weeks versus years and with no down time. Its strong alliances and substantial investments in R&D help the company facilitate customer migration to new industry platforms, such as Microsoft Windows Vista.
SOA-based Host Integration
AttachmateWRQ customers include the world's largest companies, many of which are leveraging service-oriented-architecture (SOA) and AttachmateWRQ host integration solutions to modernize their existing legacy applications. The firm is well positioned to help customers build on and use their legacy assets effectively and competitively by leveraging SOA-based host integration to develop applications and services, such as external web services and portals.
Management
The company enables customers to manage the deployment and operations of their host access and integration solutions. Building on this strength, the company also offers a robust solution for software distribution that provides organizations with a fault tolerant and easy to use method for managing software deployment. AttachmateWRQ's management capabilities allow customers' IT departments to minimize the total cost of ownership while maximizing the quality of services provided to their end users.
Security
AttachmateWRQ focuses on securing data in motion via its standards-based security software options, which provide a complete range of encryption, authentication, and authorization methods. Whether customers are accessing information on terminal screens, transferring files, or managing remote servers and passwords, AttachmateWRQ SSH-based offerings safeguard their business critical data. Focused on key business priorities, the company delivers security software that enables customers to reduce risks, protect their assets and meet stringent regulatory requirements.

AttachmateWRQ products include DATABridge, e-Vantage, EXTRA!, INFOConnect, KEA!, NetWizard, Reflection, Synapta and Verastream.

About AttachmateWRQ
AttachmateWRQ focuses on extending more information, to more people, in the most secure and manageable way possible. The leader in multi-host access and integration, the company enables organizations to maximize the value of their existing IT investments as they advance their long-term business and IT strategies. Headquartered in Seattle, AttachmateWRQ serves over 40,000 customers in nearly 60 countries worldwide. For more information, visit: www.attachmatewrq.com .