Under the terms of the agreement, Avenues will become an authorized consulting expert in CoSORT technology – and in particular, CoSORT’s Sort Control Language (SortCL) program. SortCL combines critical data manipulations – sorting, selecting, joining, aggregating, conversion, reformatting and reporting -- in a single, database-independent I/O pass. SortCL’s metadata syntax is also leveraged in the FACT (table unload) and RowGen (file synthesis) products. By becoming an IRI consulting partner, Avenues will have all three IRI products on a variety of operating systems, along with in-depth technical documentation and direct access to IRI’s software development staff. SortCL-trained Avenues engineers and advisors will be able to prototype, implement, tune, and support CoSORT operations in data warehouse ETL and business intelligence delivery operations. In additional to SortCL, Avenues can leverage various CoSORT ‘plug-in’ accelerators for third-party ETL suites.

“We’re delighted that CoSORT, FACT and RowGen will become part of Avenue’s arsenal of performance improvement strategies,” remarked Ivars Lauzums, IRI’s Director of Expert Channels. “By combining SortCL expertise with already considerable DW design and architecture experience, Avenues can get their client ETL architects staging and integrating large data volumes much faster, plus, generating reports or BI hand-offs at the same time.“ He added that “Avenues can also introduce more people to RowGen -- for creating test files used in application prototyping, DB simulations, stress-testing, and benchmarking.”

Both companies will also cooperate in certain joint sales and marketing opportunities. From Avenue’s point of view, “this partnership also represents the chance to engage and assist new and existing clients around the world. CoSORT is already renown in large data center operations and applications in many countries,” according to Avenues CEO Anupam Gupta. “We can add value by optimizing both runtime throughput and informational results -- synthesizing what we know with what project managers need.”

About CoSORT / Innovative Routines International (IRI), Inc.
Founded in 1978, IRI develops and markets high-speed data sorting, reporting and ETL-related software for UNIX and Window. CoSORT tools perform and accelerate large-volume: mainframe sort and data migrations, database reorgs, data warehouses, report generation, and, third-party software applications. The CoSORT package has 18 user interfaces, all leveraging a high-speed, portable, parallel sort engine. Many of these interfaces seamlessly replace slower, third-party sorts. CoSORT’s primary user interface, SortCL, can also simultaneously: select, sort/merge/join, aggregate, calculate, convert, reformat and report. IRI’s core products: CoSORT, FAst extraCT (FACT) for Oracle, and the RowGen data and file builder, are represented in more than 30 international offices. For additional information, visit www.cosort.com.

About Avenues International, LLC
Founded in 1994, Avenues is a premier consulting firm specializing in business intelligence, data warehousing, and interactive marketing solutions. Avenues works with medium to large organizations in developing robust, scalable, and easy-to-maintain solutions. Avenues provides end-to-end services in: business analysis and requirements gathering; architecture; OLTP and multi-dimensional data modeling; relational database design, creation and maintenance; ETL design and development; enterprise-wide data warehouses and reporting; OLAP design and development; data exchange and transformation; and, web-based intra- and internet applications. Avenues has successfully executed data warehousing and business intelligence projects for many Fortune 100 clients. For additional information, visit www.avenuesinc.com.

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CoSORT® and SortCL are trademarks of Innovative Routines International (IRI), Inc. © 2006 IRI, Inc.