NetFRAME Named Best Server of Networld+Interop Show; Company's Notes MessageCluster Selected By McGraw-Hill's Data Communications and LAN Times as Best Product in Network Server and Peripheral Category

Business Wire, April 29, 1996

MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 29, 1996--NetFRAME Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:NETF), the leading supplier of continuous availability network servers, today announced that its Notes MessageCluster has won the prestigious Best-of-Show Award in the network server category at NetWorld Interop Las Vegas `96.

The program honors new products and services that significantly advance the state of the art of distributed computing and networking. Judges selected winners in eight product categories.

"We are particularly pleased to be honored with the NetWorld InterOp Best-of-Show award because it was selected by industry experts from Data Communications and LAN Times," said Randy Meyer, Director of Solutions Marketing at NetFRAME Systems. "The selection committee was asked to vote according to their hands-on experience and industry knowledge for the server products that were entered. It is gratifying to see that the selection committee valued NetFRAME's innovative approach to providing essential network services and to creating complete, leading-edge solutions. We were also very pleased to hear that the committee considered Notes MessageCluster to be such a compelling entry, that no other servers were even selected as finalists in the network server and peripheral category."

Notes MessageCluster is an integrated hardware and software Lotus Notes server solution that scales to support up to 1,500 Notes clients in a single platform. Based on new, 150MHz versions of the company's award-winning ClusterServer 8500 series platform, the platform comes configured with Microsoft Windows NT 3.51 and Lotus Notes 4.0. With support for a two- or four-way Windows NT SMP host complex and NetFRAME's innovative MPSA intelligent I/O clustering technology, a single MessageCluster can be configured with up to 12 processors. This unique clustering design provides the processing power and throughput required to support the large volumes of traffic created by large scale 1500 Notes users. At the same time, MessageCluster is unique in offering on-line scalability and manageability, and continuous 24-hour per day availability. In addition to offering a comprehensive hardware and software Notes solution, NetFRAME also offers optional configuration, installation, capacity planning, system tuning and support services.

About the MessageCluster

The base Notes MessageCluster is designed to support 250 Notes clients. It comes equipped with one 150MHz Pentium host processor, one 486-based I/O Server providing two Ethernet connections and one Fast/Wide SCSI channel, 64MB of ECC protected system memory, 4GB of Live-Drive storage, NetFRAME's Maestro server management software, Windows NT 3.51 and Lotus Notes Release 4.0. Gemini processing is available as an option. The system can be expanded in place to support over 1500 users. The maximum configuration provides a four-way SMP complex, up to eight I/O Server and/or Application Server modules, 1GB of memory and 504GB of on-line storage. With SMP Gemini, the MessageCluster can support a two-way SMP complex, with a backup processor/cache module for both processor units.

About NetFRAME Systems

Founded in 1987, NetFRAME Systems Incorporated is a leader in enterprise-class multiprocessor servers offering continuous availability and scalability while supporting industry standard software. NetFRAME's servers provide a compelling price/performance alternative to networked server proliferation and are field upgradable as a customer's needs grow. NetFRAME ClusterServers are sold through resellers and system integrators worldwide. -0-

NOTE TO EDITORS: NetFRAME, ClusterServer, and MPSA are trademarks of NetFRAME Systems Incorporated. Other product names mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

CONTACT: Dave & Bairey Communications

Peter Dave, 415/882-9905

peter@dbcomm.com