Data General Reaps Rewards of Windows NT Server Market Momentum

Business Wire, Nov 16, 1998

WESTBORO, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 16, 1998--

Focusing on NT Enterprise Solutions Proves the Right Strategy,

as 1998 Revenues Soar Nearly 65 Percent

Data General's focus on providing enterprise NT solutions is paying off.

"Data General has capitalized on the growing acceptance of Windows NT as an enterprise operating system. In fact, Windows NT has become our fastest growing business," said David Flawn, vice president of NT Marketing for Data General. "During our just completed fiscal 1998 year we saw a year-over-year revenue increase of nearly 65 percent, more than twice the industry-wide NT market growth. NT now represents just under two thirds of our total Intel based AViiON revenues."

"To maintain this pace, we are aggressively following the Microsoft and Intel roadmaps, as we deliver a full line of NT servers. We are adding to that with innovative packaging such as our "in-a-Box" solutions, and supporting that with leading enterprise applications from our strategic software alliances and an extensive services portfolio that includes a 99.9 percent uptime guarantee for businesses who choose to run their mission-critical applications on NT," said Mr. Flawn.

"Adding to that, Data General today has announced that it is the first vendor to extend its 99.9 percent uptime guarantee to users of Microsoft's newly announced SQL Server 7.0 relational database," said Mr. Flawn. "As a Microsoft Authorized Support Center, we are supporting that by providing a broad range of fixed-price services, plus 7x24 support to help customers deploy mission-critical applications using SQL Server 7.0."

Data General's success in the NT market has been recognized by International Data Corporation (IDC), which has ranked Data General's family of AViiON servers as the marketshare leader in the worldwide NT midrange server market (systems priced between $100,000 and $1 million).

"Data General's value proposition is playing well in the midrange NT market," said Jay Bretzmann, vice president, worldwide systems research for IDC. "Data General has leveraged its experience in UNIX to capture an early lead in the fast-growing NT midrange market."

DataGeneral's Targeted NT Service and Support Programs

In line with its commitment to providing customers with the highest level of availability and reliability 24 hours a day, seven days a week, Data General recently announced its NTerprise Total Care Services and Support programs. The Total Care offering features the OMNiiCARE program with its 99.9 percent uptime guarantee. The conditions and limitations of the uptime guarantee are described at www.dg.com/services/html/omniicare_service.html. Total Care also includes a broad range of professional and educational services that provide consultation, quick start implementation programs and complete business solutions based on Windows NT technology.

"With NTerprise Total Care, Data General is offering NT users the most comprehensive support program for their mission-critical business requirements," said Mike Mancuso, vice president of U.S. Sales and Services for Data General.

Microsoft Healthcare Alliance

Data General further strengthened its position in the NT market recently by aligning with Microsoft to promote interoperable healthcare enterprise solutions using Microsoft ActiveX for Healthcare. As part of the relationship, the companies are establishing a network of Healthcare Competency Centers, which will allow software developers to test and demonstrate ActiveX-compliant healthcare applications. The first recently opened at Data General's Westboro headquarters.

Further demonstrating its ability to deliver the most advanced healthcare solutions, Data General, in conjunction with Microsoft, is showing off a powerful multi-terabyte medical data warehouse using Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 at this week's Comdex show. The two companies are demonstrating the data warehouse, called TeraCLIN, running on Data General's eight-processor AViiON servers and CLARiiON full Fibre Channel storage subsystems.

"For the past 25 years, Data General has been a leader in providing enterprise solutions to the healthcare industry, with our servers and storage systems currently in use at more than 1,200 hospitals. This expanded healthcare relationship with Microsoft has further enhanced our ability to deliver advanced solutions," said Bob Iacono, vice president, Worldwide Healthcare.

TheAViiON NT Server Family

Data General's Windows NT-based AViiON family includes the low-end single- and dual-Pentium II processor based AV 2200 server; the AV 2700 which can be rackmounted in high-density configurations using up to 12 dual-Pentium II processor systems; the AV 3700, which can support up to four Pentium II Xeon processors; and its newly announced, high-end AV 8700 enterprise server, which can support up to four Pentium II Xeon processors and is expandable to eight processors.

"In-a-Box" Packaged Solutions

All AViiON NT servers can be used in Data General's unique pre-configured, pre-tested rackmounted AViiON "in-a-Box" packages. This includes NT Cluster-in-a-Box running Microsoft Cluster Server and TermServer-in-a-Box(TM) running Microsoft Windows Terminal Server.