Amdahl Expands Open Systems Capabilities; Will Offer New Ultra Enterprise Server Family From Sun; Adds RDBMS Software, Fibre 2000 Storage Array Series, S/390 to Server Connectivity, Uninterruptible Power Supply and System Management Enhancements

Business Wire, April 16, 1996

SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 16, 1996--Amdahl Corporation, an enterprise computing company, today announced the Ultra(TM) Enterprise(TM) family of servers from Sun Microsystems, consolidating the company's leadership in providing enterprise-level open system platforms from departmental servers to enterprise-level solutions. Amdahl also announced products and services from Oracle Corporation and Exide Electronics, in addition to connectivity and systems management offerings that add significant value to the Ultra Enterprise family.

The Ultra Enterprise family offers unprecedented scaleable performance with enhanced availability features. These servers provide the kind of performance, I/O bandwidth, main memory, and disk storage needed to implement business critical applications such as SAP R/3, data warehousing, and OLTP (online transaction processing) required by Fortune 1000 companies.

"The introduction of the Ultra Enterprise servers makes a compelling case for customers to move forward in implementing commercial solutions using client/server technology," said Jim Hilbert, vice president, worldwide sales and marketing, server business, Amdahl Corporation. "With the experience and services that we are able to provide and the partnerships that we have formed, Amdahl is offering customers a logical and safe choice for implementing enterprise-level client/server solutions."

Wisconsin Electric has partnered with Amdahl to use its consulting and integration services to deploy SAP R/3 on SPARC(R) technologies supplied by Amdahl in a distributed computing environment. "Amdahl really cares about helping us solve our problems," said Randy Lueder, department head, Wisconsin Electric. "They understand our environment and proactively pursue solutions that meet our requirements. We can trust their results."

Amdahl Commitment to Open Enterprise Computing

In 1993, Amdahl forged an alliance with Sun Microsystems offering enterprise and workgroup servers based on SPARC. Since then, two hundred of the world's largest users of information technology have deployed SPARC solutions from Amdahl, making Amdahl a leading supplier of servers for large enterprise customers in distributed computing environments.

"Amdahl's experience and knowledge of mission-critical solutions for large enterprises and their support for UNIX(R) open solutions is exactly what Sun looks for in a solutions provider," said Joe Roebuck, vice president, worldwide field operations, Sun Microsystems. "Pairing the Ultra Enterprise servers with Amdahl's core competencies: enterprise wide management solutions; customized applications; and consulting services, delivers the complete solution customers are looking for."

The Ultra Enterprise Servers

Amdahl offers a full range of products in the Ultra Enterprise family. The high-end Ultra Enterprise(R) 6000 offers up to 30 UltraSPARC processors, 30 gigabytes of main memory and up to 10 terabytes of disk storage. The Ultra Enterprise 3000 offers up to six UltraSPARC processors, up to six gigabytes of main memory and two terabytes of disk storage. The midrange Ultra Enterprise 4000 and Ultra Enterprise 5000 models are well suited for both database and application server requirements. Also included in the Amdahl offering are the Ultra Enterprise workgroup servers: Ultra Enterprise 1, Ultra Enterprise 2, and Ultra Enterprise 150.

Further Enhancements to the Ultra Enterprise Family

Amdahl is further enhancing the Ultra Enterprise line of servers with products and services that assist customers in the deployment of enterprise applications using the UltraSPARC technology.

Oracle RDBMS

Building on its long term relationship with Oracle Corporation, Amdahl is offering the entire spectrum of standard Oracle(R) products including: the RDBMS, gateways and protocol adapters, tools, development aids, web and media products. Oracle is the top-selling RDBMS for UNIX systems(1). Customers purchasing Oracle products from Amdahl can take advantage of the large amount of resources dedicated to client/server deployment services from installation to integration, to customized applications development.

Fibre 2000 Storage Array Series

To meet the data storage needs of the Ultra Enterprise servers, Amdahl is offering the Fibre 2000 Storage Array Series, optimized for data warehousing and other applications requiring high throughput and data security. With the versatility to be configured for departmental servers or larger multi-terabyte storage requirements, the Fibre 2000 Series delivers the benefits of data protection, fibre channel performance, and high capacity with the ease of graphical user interface management -- at a competitive price.

A InterConnect Gateway Offering

Through an agreement with Data/Ware Development Inc. coupled with Amdahl developed software, Amdahl is offering the A InterConnect Gateway, a high speed, OEMI parallel channel solution linking System/390 applications and data to Ultra Enterprise servers. This combination of hardware and software provides higher performance and additional capacity for applications, such as data warehousing or OLTP, that depend on accessing data from the S/390 environment.