Release Details

    CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 21, 2003--

      Petroleum leader expands use of AspenTech's fuels marketing
     application across Canada to lower global distribution costs
                     and improve customer service

Aspen Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: AZPN) today announced that Petro-Canada has standardized on its Aspen Retail solution to optimize secondary distribution of petroleum products, which include gasoline, heating oil, and lubricants. The company has expanded its current license to a five-year, multi-million dollar global agreement that covers all regions of Canada. Standardizing on the solution will enable Petro-Canada to further reduce its secondary distribution costs and to deliver improved service to its customers.

Aspen Retail is a fuels marketing solution designed to address secondary downstream distribution activities, from terminal to end-customer. By implementing the solution in eastern and central Canada, Petro-Canada has already achieved significant savings, including reduced transportation costs, inventory levels, and personnel requirements. The company has also benefited from improvements in the accuracy of demand forecasting.

The updated license expands Petro-Canada's use of the software to operations in western Canada. The solution enables the company's distributors to calculate the most economical way to transport fuel and lubricants to each customer location based on accurate demand forecasts, thereby optimizing replenishment schedules and ensuring customers receive timely deliveries.

"Aspen Retail has helped us to achieve significant efficiencies in our secondary distribution, and this new agreement will allow us to build on those improvements," said Philippe LaMarche, Manager, Wholesale Logistics for Petro-Canada. "The solution enables our distributors to track performance against benchmarks that were never available before. By achieving fewer kilometers per liter and less time per route for thousands of deliveries, we are seeing savings in every category of our fleet operating costs."

In regions where the Aspen Retail solution is implemented, the system forecasts customer orders and generates the optimal replenishment schedule. This schedule is exported directly to wireless devices carried by delivery truck drivers, who also receive specific information such as where to load, the quantity to pickup, the driving directions to the customer, the delivery window, and customer details. The wireless devices interface between Aspen Retail and Petro-Canada's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system--enabling immediate billing as orders are delivered, and ensuring that supply chain planning and financial systems remain synchronized.

"By deploying the Web-based capabilities of our Aspen Retail solution throughout its global enterprise, Petro-Canada is satisfying its most important constituent --its customer," said David McQuillin, President and CEO of AspenTech. "Superior customer satisfaction, combined with the substantial operational cost savings, adds up to a significant competitive advantage for Petro-Canada."

Petro-Canada's new license agreement covers the key solution components from the Aspen Retail suite, including the automated stock replenishment (ASR), resource scheduling optimization (RSO), lubes, and specialty products (SP) modules.

The Aspen Retail suite is an important element of AspenTech's solutions for Enterprise Operations Management in the petroleum industry. These integrated, enterprise-wide solutions combine engineering and manufacturing/supply chain technologies to help companies optimize the way they engineer and run their manufacturing and supply chain operations.

About Petro-Canada

Petro-Canada is one of Canada's largest oil and gas companies, operating in both the upstream and downstream sectors of the industry in Canada and internationally. Its common shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol PCA, and on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol PCZ. For more information, visit www.petro-canada.com.

About AspenTech

Aspen Technology, Inc. provides industry-leading software and implementation services that enable process companies to increase efficiency and profitability. AspenTech's engineering product line is used to design and improve plants and processes, maximizing returns throughout an asset's operating life. Its manufacturing/supply chain product line allows companies to increase margins in their plants and supply chains, by managing customer demand, optimizing production, and streamlining the delivery of finished products. These two offerings are combined to create solutions for Enterprise Operations Management (EOM), integrated enterprise-wide systems that provide process manufacturers with the capability to dramatically improve their operating performance. Over 1,500 leading companies already rely on AspenTech's software, including Aventis, Bayer, BASF, BP, ChevronTexaco, Dow Chemical, DuPont, ExxonMobil, Fluor, Foster Wheeler, GlaxoSmithKline, Shell, and TotalFinaElf. For more information, visit www.aspentech.com.

Certain paragraphs of this press release contain forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. For this purpose, any statement using the term "will," "should," "could," "anticipates," "believes" or a comparable term is a forward-looking statement. Actual results may vary significantly from AspenTech's expectations based on a number of risks and uncertainties, including: AspenTech's lengthy sales cycle which makes it difficult to predict quarterly operating results; fluctuations in AspenTech's quarterly operating results; AspenTech's dependence on customers in cyclical industries; adverse global economic conditions; AspenTech's ability to raise additional capital as required; the FTC's investigation of the Hyprotech acquisition; the outcome of AspenTech's restructuring plans; intense competition; AspenTech's need to develop and market products successfully; and other risk factors described from time to time in AspenTech's periodic reports and registration statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. AspenTech cannot guarantee any future results, levels of activity, performance, or achievements. Moreover, neither AspenTech nor anyone else assumes responsibility for the accuracy and completeness of any forward-looking statements. AspenTech undertakes no obligation to update any of the forward-looking statements after the date of this press release.

AspenTech, Aspen Retail and the aspen leaf logo are trademarks of Aspen Technology, Inc., Cambridge, Mass.

    CONTACT: For Media:
             Aspen Technology, Inc. Peter Watt, +44 1223 819-752
             peter.watt@aspentech.com
             or
             For Investors:
             Aspen Technology, Inc. Joshua Young, 617/949-1274
             joshua.young@aspentech.com

    SOURCE: Aspen Technology, Inc.