Unisys Unveils Advanced Sentinel Self-Management Technologies for the Windows-Based Data Center

Business Wire, March 24, 2003

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

BLUE BELL, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 24, 2003

New Security and Predictive Self-Healing Features Offer Simplified

Management and Reduced Costs

Unisys today unveiled new Unisys Sentinel software that simplifies server and application management for enterprise solutions based on Microsoft Windows.

As part of a broader initiative to deliver industry leading self-managing solutions, new Application Sentinel and Server Sentinel 2.0 products increase manageability and interoperability while reducing administration costs and increasing efficiency within the network.

The new Sentinel products build upon proven systems management capabilities for scale-up environments and demonstrate the Unisys commitment to delivering superior self-managing technologies at the mission-critical server, database and application levels.

Self-managing IT has become increasingly essential to support broad-based computing trends, including server consolidation, policy-based computing and utility-based computing. The need to simplify management of computing environments has become an industry-wide necessity for enterprise users.

Addressing this need, Unisys developed Sentinel technologies that simplify systems administration, improve system availability and reduce unplanned downtime. It enables simplified operations and management, increased security and an expanded capability for control of critical computing resources with added flexibility - all from one centrally managed, easy-to-access console.

Sentinel technologies play an indispensable role in delivering the advantages of server and application consolidation, one of the key strategic solutions for which the Unisys ES7000 enterprise server was designed.

Benefits driving the adoption of server consolidation by enterprises include business continuance/disaster recovery, improved security, quicker deployment and integration of applications to take advantage of business opportunity and better manageability.

The Sentinel portfolio of management solutions helps automate the consolidation process, providing administrators a comprehensive view of all applications hosted on a Unisys ES7000 from a single console.

"The industry has recognized the future promise and benefits of self-management software," said Jon Burns, director, Unisys Sentinel Program. "Unisys is delivering viable, interoperable self-managing solutions today. The Sentinel product line delivers real, ready-to-run solutions that minimize the complexity of server and application management and provide immediate results and cost savings."

Inside Sentinel Technologies

The new Application Sentinel products provide a number of key attributes designed to manage and optimize the performance of popular application and database solutions running on Unisys ES7000 platforms or ClearPath servers installed with Windows partitions.

Equipped with application workload management, performance monitoring, cluster workload management, application optimization and application discovery and management, Application Sentinel offers the capability to consolidate and simplify the administration of multiple, mixed workloads from a central source.

Application Sentinel comprises three modules that customers can license separately on a per-processor basis depending on their needs. Application Sentinel Server for Consolidation helps network administrators map and track critical applications across the network, test for interoperability or conflicts and deploy or migrate applications to their new Unisys servers.

Application Sentinel for Resource Management helps administrators manage workloads and allocate appropriate resources for mission-critical applications to ensure optimum performance. Application Sentinel for SQL Server optimizes SQL database performance and includes sophisticated monitoring and diagnostics tools to ensure high availability.

Server Sentinel 2.0 delivers a new level of expanded functionality for simplified server management. Featuring new self-management and self-healing features, the latest release of this software adds major security enhancements, including service processor intrusion prevention, firewall and system-level vulnerability assessment.

In addition, Server Sentinel provides cluster verification and predictive fail-over capabilities that improve system availability, a new enterprise management interface as well as an enhanced navigation GUI interface. Server Sentinel continues to deliver automated maintenance facilities, systems inventory and round-the-clock system monitoring.

Server Sentinel incorporates NetIQ AppManager to analyze and optimize the performance of Unisys servers and provide Sentinel with compatibility to more than 50 cross-platform application management modules for AppManager.

This combination delivers proactive monitoring and quick diagnostics and recovery of the physical hardware and operating system as well as business-critical server applications, such as Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server and Active Directory.