Focus on Multi-Core Scalability, Performance, Language
              Standards and Production System Support

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Feb. 16, 2010 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Versant
Corporation (Nasdaq:VSNT), an industry leader in specialized data
management software, today announced the release of version 8 of its
flagship product, the Versant Object Database (VOD).

VOD 8 is a major upgrade from its predecessor, VOD 7, providing
enhanced support for high performance computing multi-CPU/multi-core
server architectures, significant optimizations in internal memory
management and caching implementations, and updates to its standard
programming interfaces for Java/Java Data Objects (JDO) and
Microsoft.NET.

"VOD 8 is another important technological milestone for Versant," said
Jochen Witte, CEO of Versant. "The performance and scalability of our
enterprise database server with VOD 8 allows our solution to outperform
the relational database competition by an order of magnitude in complex
database applications."

Pole Position, which provides an open source benchmark test suite,
demonstrates that VOD 8 performs an average of 10 times faster compared
to leading relational databases. In addition, internal scalability
benchmark results with VOD 8 show that a system may take full advantage
of high performance multi-CPU/multi-core server architectures with
linear throughput up to the maximum capacity of all utilized cores,
making VOD 8 a premier choice for demanding enterprise and high
performance computing applications.

What Customers Say About VOD 8

"We've converted our MS-SQL Server.Net application to Versant Object
Database.NET and we've seen a 1,000 percent improvement in our data
read/write speeds," said Jonathan Larouche, senior software architect
at Gestion Vision Globale, Inc., an enterprise software company located
in Quebec, Canada. "We have calculated that we will make our call
center more efficient and will also have a positive impact with order
processing on our customer website."

VOD 8 - A Mature Mainstream Database

In general, object oriented application development (OOAD) has matured
over the past 10 years and is now considered mainstream. Microsoft is
embracing OOAD with its latest .NET application framework, which
includes new object oriented programming interfaces for databases, most
notably LINQ (Language Integrated Query) and ADO.NET's Entity
Framework. VOD's new software development kit for the Microsoft .NET
Framework is fully integrated with ADO.NET and LINQ and will create
exciting new opportunities and markets for the Versant Object Database
by simplifying the adoption of an Entity Framework based approach to
application development.

VOD 8 also offers various enhancements to JDO, the existing Java
database standard, including upgrading the Versant JDO software
development kit compatibility to the latest JDO 2.0 standard.

A Breakthrough in Developer Productivity and Database Performance

Application developers are creating sophisticated applications for
complex markets including telecommunications, high performance
computing, financial services and computer simulation. Increasingly
complex data models are demanding higher performance and scalability
from the database tier. Breaking up these complex data models into
tables for SQL databases, while at the same time achieving performance
and scalability requirements, has become a daunting task for the
developer.

With VOD 8, the developer can focus work efforts on the application and
its domain model. VOD 8 will handle the required persistence services,
providing performance and scalability, while managing availability and
demand requirements created by increasing concurrency and growing data
volume. Program coding by the developer may be reduced by an average of
40 percent with VOD 8, with performance often 10 times faster than
traditional database systems.

Platform Support and Availability

VOD 8 is now available for all primary operating system platforms,
including Microsoft Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008,
Red Hat Linux 5.3, Sun Solaris 5.10 (Ix86 and Sparc) and HP-UX 11.x
(Itanium).

About Versant

Versant Corporation (Nasdaq:VSNT) is an industry leader in database
management software, helping software developers to create unique
applications handling complex information and high performance / high
availability requirements. Versant customers cut hardware costs, speed
and simplify development, and significantly reduce administration
costs. Versant's solutions are deployed in a wide array of industries,
including telecommunications, financial services, transportation,
manufacturing, and defense. With over 100,000 installations, Versant
has been a highly reliable partner for Global 2000 companies such as
Ericsson, Verizon, Siemens, US Government and Financial Times. For more
information, call 650-232-2400 or visit www.versant.com.


CONTACT: Nadel Phelan, Inc.
         Heidi Rosenberg
         831-440-2405
         heidi@nadelphelan.com
         
         Versant Corporation
         Jerry Wong, Chief Financial Officer
         1-800-VERSANT