Cisco, Olicom Announce Joint Marketing Agreement for End-to-end ATM Solutions; Broad interoperability testing ensures Olicom ATM cards integrate smoothly with all Cisco ATM backbone equipment

Business Wire, Sept 18, 1996

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 18, 1996--Olicom (NASDAQ:OLCMF), a leading international supplier of high-performance networking solutions, and Cisco Systems Inc, today announced a joint marketing agreement for ATM solutions to ensure interoperability between the companies' ATM equipment and to jointly promote the benefits of end-to-end ATM solutions that combine Cisco and Olicom ATM products.

The initiative enhances the options available to managers of large network installations seeking to implement fault-tolerant ATM across their enterprise. The agreement carries important strategic value for Cisco in that the Olicom RapidFire ATM adapter is the only one in the industry to take full advantage of Cisco's SSRP (Simple Server Redundancy Protocol), for the first time delivering true fault tolerance in ATM networks.

"Cisco has recognized that Olicom is a strong emerging player in the ATM market with industry-leading hardware and software technology, and saw that it was important to establish this interoperability testing for Olicom's ATM offerings," said Michael Camp, President and CEO at Olicom USA. "Now that our RapidFire has become the only ATM adapter that fully supports Cisco's SSRP protocol, the strength of our partnership and the joint benefits we deliver for ATM customers has just increased significantly. We expect the resulting interoperability will significantly improve both Cisco's and Olicom's sales forces' ability to effectively address the key issues involved in implementing ATM."

"Cisco and Olicom have had considerable success to date in deploying joint solutions, and this interoperability agreement further guarantees a smooth integration of our ATM hardware with Olicom's RapidFire ATM adapter," said Steve Pomeroy, ATM Partnerships Manager at Cisco. "Olicom has a long history in ATM hardware and software, and now their full support for Cisco's SSRP protocol makes it more important than ever for Cisco to develop and deliver joint ATM solutions with Olicom."

Olicom will perform the majority of the interoperability testing at its in-house testing labs. Cisco is making a substantial investment in equipment and manpower to ensure that Olicom can guarantee interoperability across Cisco's LightStream family of ATM products. In addition, Cisco will perform fault tolerance and resiliency tests at the company's headquarters in San Jose, Calif. The interoperability testing builds upon a long-standing relationship between Cisco and Olicom in Token-Ring and Ethernet switching technology and is an integral part of both companies' goal of delivering end-to-end solutions across the enterprise.

"Cisco and Olicom's joint efforts in ATM represent an important step forward for the acceptance of ATM in the enterprise," said Kimberly Hiller, network analyst at Datapro Information Services Group, a New Jersey-based market research firm that watches the networking market closely. "It is vital that vendors work together to develop interoperable solutions, especially in ATM, which companies are relying more and more heavily on for mission-critical networking."

Cisco and Olicom have agreed on a testing schedule, the result of which will be a comprehensive interoperability matrix certifying which components and features of Cisco's ATM product line are supported by Olicom's RapidFire ATM 155 network adapter. This interoperability matrix will be an integral tool available to Cisco sales engineers as they make recommendations on optimum configurations for their customers' ATM installation.

Olicom's RapidFire ATM PCI 155 adapter is a 155-Mbps SONET multimode fiber card for PCI bus PCs and servers. The card is ideal for servers directly connected to an ATM backbone and accessed by clients located both on the ATM network and a switch-connected classical LAN (Token-Ring or Ethernet), as well as direct desktop connections for applications requiring high bandwidth -- such as multimedia or imaging. Olicom's CellDriver LAN emulation software enables the RapidFire adapter to operate under all major operating systems, including WIndows 95, Windows NT 4.0 and Novell NetWare 4.1 and 3.12.

PC Magazine selected Olicom's RapidFire ATM adapter for the prestigious "Editors' Choice" in its April 23, 1996 issue, earning the reviewers' top marks based on ease-of-installation, hardware and software performance, and breadth of driver support. Olicom garnered more sweeping endorsement of its expertise in ATM with Microsoft's licensing of Olicom's LAN emulation and signaling software (now known as CellDriver) for use in the Windows NT operating system -- enabling Windows NT installations to take advantage of ATM technology while protecting their investment in application and system software.

ATM has emerged as the high-speed standard to deploy the next generation of client-server and multimedia applications that have begun to proliferate in enterprise networks. ATM provides the increased speed and greater control of bandwidth required at the desktop for these data-intensive applications.