Attachmate's NetWizard Proven to Make Windows 95 Migrations Easier and More Cost Effective

Business Wire, Oct 28, 1996

BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 28, 1996--Attachmate(R) Corp. today announced the findings of an independent test performed by The Tolly Group, a strategic consulting and independent testing organization.

The study found that NetWizard(R), the latest version of Attachmate's award-winning enterprise software management system, significantly reduces the time and cost required to deploy operating systems and upgrade applications. Additionally, The Tolly Group determined that NetWizard is cost effective when migrating as few as 10 PCs to Microsoft(R) Windows(R) 95.

"Our testing found that significant cost and time savings can be achieved when companies use Attachmate's NetWizard to automate the migration to Windows 95," said Kevin Tolly, president and CEO of The Tolly Group based in Manasquan, NJ. "NetWizard also provides tools that can significantly enhance a network manager's ability to track software usage and 'undo' software distributions which is a valuable tool when PCs must be restored to their prior state."

To test NetWizard, The Tolly Group conducted manual hardware and software inventories on a network of 38 PCs, and then manually upgraded each PC to Windows 95 and Microsoft Office 95. The time required to manually perform each task was recorded and then compared to the time required to perform the same tasks through NetWizard.

According to The Tolly Group, NetWizard is cost effective for a migration of as few as 10 PCs, with savings increasing as the number of PCs grows. Manually migrating 100 PCs costs approximately $15,000 (based on labor costs of $45 per hour) while a similar automated NetWizard migration costs approximately $5,000. A 200 PC migration costs more than $30,000 manually compared to approximately $7,500 with NetWizard.

Other highlights of the test results include:

-- Manual hardware and software inventories required

approximately two hours per PC -- NetWizard inventoried all

38 PCs in only 8 minutes.

-- Manual installation of Windows 95 on all 38 PCs required

more than 30 man-hours -- NetWizard installed Windows 95

on all 38 PCs in only 1 hour 48 minutes.

-- Manual upgrading of all 38 PCs to Office 95 required more than

3 hours -- NetWizard duplicated the upgrade in only 25 minutes.

Attachmate has identified five critical steps in a successful Windows 95 migration. These steps are to:

1. Establish control of existing hardware and software resources

2. Determine hardware upgrade needs

3. Determine application software needs

4. Replace existing Windows or MS-DOS operating systems with

Windows 95

5. Migrate existing applications and deploy new 32-bit

applications

NetWizard automates all these tasks.

NetWizard provides a powerful suite of management capabilities. NetWizard's unique peer-to-peer architecture provides the flexibility and power to manage distributed software environments of any size or type. With NetWizard, companies can:

-- Inventory hardware and software installed on all desktops throughout the enterprise

-- Automatically distribute software to local and remote MS-DOS, Windows, Windows 95, Windows NT(R), and Macintosh(R) workstations

-- Automatically update remote and grouped workstations through simple drag-and-drop functionality

-- Automatically meter application usage

-- Limit the time allowed in certain applications. For example, limiting Web browsing to one hour per day for certain groups of users

-- Easily monitor and enforce software licenses to ensure enterprise-wide legal compliance

-- Remotely view and edit files (including drag-and-drop edits to the Windows 95 Registry), restart Windows, reboot, or execute programs on end user desktops

Pricing and Availability

NetWizard is available now from Attachmate resellers, retailers and VARs, as well as through the Attachmate sales organizations (with an estimated street price of $34 U.S. per seat). NetWizard is also sold in packs structured to provide companies with everything necessary to manage a specific number of desktops. U.S. pricing is as follows (international pricing is the foreign currency equivalent of these prices): -0-

    NetWizard 10-Pack    $    595
    NetWizard 50-Pack    $  2,675
    NetWizard 100-Pack   $  4,815
    NetWizard 500-Pack   $ 21,665
    NetWizard 1000-Pack  $ 38,995