Tandem and BEA Team to Extend BEA TUXEDO Transaction Technology to Windows NT System-Based Clustered Servers

Business Wire, August 5, 1996

CUPERTINO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aug. 5, 1996--Tandem(r) Computers Incorporated and BEA Systems, Inc. today announced a significant licensing agreement during the next several years under which Tandem will significantly extend its open systems strategy for online transaction processing (OLTP) by utilizing BEA TUXEDO(r) transaction monitor middleware as part of forthcoming Microsoft(r) Windows NT(tm) system- based clustered servers. The new partnership will enable customers seeking to benefit from the price/performance advantages of the Windows NT system based platform to run extremely scalable and reliable BEA TUXEDO applications on Tandem's Windows NT-based clustered servers when they are available early next year, as well as on Windows NT-based servers from other vendors.

The two companies also announced that BEA TUXEDO will be implemented on Tandem's Himalaya(r) family of massively parallel processing (MPP) servers. As a result, customers will be able to leverage their investments in BEA TUXEDO, the industry's leading open distributed transaction processing environment, by fully exploiting the industry's most reliable and scalable NonStop(r) parallel processing platform.

Under the new agreement, Tandem will build on BEA TUXEDO to deliver an environment called ServerWare(tm) TUXEDO for Windows NT system-based servers, as well as Release 2 of its NonStop(r) TUXEDO for Himalaya servers. Both new products will leverage Tandem's new ServerNet(tm) high-throughput, high-reliability clustering technology.

Tandem's previous TUXEDO development and distribution agreement with Novell enabled it to deliver the first release of NonStop TUXEDO, a version of the product modified for its massively parallel Himalaya range of servers. NonStop TUXEDO Release 1 has been shipping for more than a year to such large customers as Wells Fargo and Yamaichi. BEA assumed Novell's development and distribution contract with Tandem when it became the developer and distributor of TUXEDO in February. The new BEA/Tandem licensing agreement builds upon and extends the previous partnership.

"Today's announcement marks another step in our strategy to bring Tandem's reliability and scalability benefits to a wider market," said Bill Heil, Tandem senior vice president and general manager of the ServerWare strategic business unit. "The new products resulting from our agreement with BEA will open the power of Tandem's industry-leading transaction processing platform by leveraging the industry's most widely deployed open transaction processing middleware--BEA TUXEDO."

"Tandem is well-known and has long been a leader in high-end transaction processing. The attributes of its computing platforms suit BEA TUXEDO well, and we are pleased that Tandem has embraced BEA's middleware as its open transaction processing standard," said Ed Scott, executive vice president of Worldwide Field Operations for BEA. "With the Tandem implementation of BEA TUXEDO, customers gain new levels of scalability, processing power, and reliability for open applications running in massively parallel and clustered environments."

Extensions that Tandem has already made to the BEA TUXEDO software include the integration of Tandem's process management and monitoring modules, transaction protection mechanisms, and messaging attributes -- all necessary to allow NonStop TUXEDO software to take advantage of Tandem's massively parallel processing platform. These same enhancements will be applied to Tandem's Windows NT system-based ServerWare TUXEDO product, along with ServerNet(tm) technology-enabled clustering capabilities.

NonStop TUXEDO Release 2 software and ServerWare TUXEDO software will ship in the second half of 1997.

Founded in 1974, Tandem Computers Incorporated (NYSE:TDM) designs and delivers technology solutions that companies rely on in a business world that runs 24 hours a day. A US$2.3 billion company headquartered in Cupertino, California, Tandem has offices, strategic partners, and providers in more than 50 countries around the world.

BEA Systems, Inc., is the leading provider of distributed enterprise middleware solutions. Founded in 1995, BEA's mission is to enable distributed mission-critical applications that can work seamlessly with both legacy and client/server environments. BEA provides a distributed application framework, the infrastructure for developing and maintaining client/server applications, using the BEA TUXEDO transaction and messaging middleware as its core engine. BEA also provides professional services and will continue to build its solution through development, partnerships, and acquisitions. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, BEA is venture-funded by Warburg, Pincus Ventures, L.P. Additional information on BEA is available on the Internet at http://www.beasys.com. -0- Note to Editors: Tandem, Himalaya, NonStop, ServerNet, ServerWare and the Tandem logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Tandem Computers Incorporated in the United States and/or other countries. TUXEDO is a registered trademark of Novell, Inc., exclusively licensed to BEA Systems, Inc. Microsoft, Windows, and Windows NT are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. All other brand and product names are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.