Lend Lease Gains Wide-Ranging Global IT Efficiencies with Softricity's Software Virtualization; Speeds Disaster Recovery, Operating System Patching and Application Deployment; Spikes Server Utilization and Performance

Business Wire, Sept 26, 2005

BOSTON -- Softricity(R) today announced that Lend Lease Corporation, a global real estate services business, is using Softricity's SoftGrid(R) application virtualization platform to simplify, expedite and improve efficiencies for IT operations across its North America, Europe and Asia Pacific offices.

Lend Lease, which manages multi-billion dollars in assets, initially purchased SoftGrid to eliminate application conflicts and, as a result, consolidate and better utilize its servers. Not only did they reduce the number of servers needed from 50 to just 14, they discovered a wealth of other SoftGrid uses that have enhanced other critical aspects of IT administration.

"SoftGrid has been an evolution for our IT business," said Jonathan O'Brien, Senior Systems Engineer, Lend Lease. "By virtualizing applications we're profoundly impacting the way we handle disaster recovery, operating system patching and help desk support. Everything is accelerated and simplified, and we're able to service users around the world much more quickly at consistently higher levels."

SoftGrid transforms Windows applications from products that must be installed and managed locally into virtual services that are centrally managed and deployed on-demand--without any recoding--to any desktop, server or laptop. SoftGrid's patented application virtualization technology enables applications to run in a protected "sandbox" environment without installation or alteration to the host operating system. This eliminates application conflicts and the need for time-consuming regression testing, and enables just-in-time application and patch deployment.

Lend Lease, which is in the process of migrating its server-based computing infrastructure to SoftGrid, has already made a significant impact on their business:

-- Consolidated from 50 to 14 servers; enabling 24x7 utilization

    Before SoftGrid, Lend Lease had to run applications on different
    servers because of conflicts. In addition, because of offices'
    differing time zones, most servers were idle for 12-15 hours a day
    when the offices were offline. Now with SoftGrid's ability to run
    any application alongside any other, they've consolidated the
    servers and enabled them to be used by offices in different
    locales, increasing server usage from 8 hours to nearly 24 hours a
    day.

    -- Cut operating system patching from 45 days to 1 week

    Lend Lease receives operating system patches on a monthly basis.
    Because it took 45 days from first change control to complete
    deployment, they were in a perpetual patching state. Much time was
    spent regression testing the new patches against existing
    applications to make sure applications were not affected. Since
    SoftGrid-enabled applications are not OS-dependent, "patching is
    not risky the way it was before," according to Brian Hipp, Systems
    Engineering Manager, Lend Lease, and regression testing is not
    needed. Now patches can be rolled out for the entire farm with one
    set of tests.

    -- Simplifying, accelerating disaster recovery efforts

    Lend Lease's DR initiative was a 10-hour per application process
    in the past. It was synchronous--one application was reinstalled
    to servers before the next one could be done. With SoftGrid, since
    applications can be backed up as though they are data files, they
    can all be easily restored from a central location at the same
    time. Recent disaster recovery exercises have shown a reduction of
    80% in time to recover.

    -- Faster, less costly deployment for more applications

    In the past when a business unit wanted a new application deployed
    within the Citrix environment, they first had to pay for a new
    server that would run that application without conflict and, in
    most cases, a test server also. Now they can simply add the
    application to an existing server farm with no infrastructure cost
    to the business unit barring any back-end data server such as a
    database server.

    -- Reduced application-specific help desk calls by 1/3

    Eliminating application conflicts has lowered the number of help
    desk calls logged for key applications.

"Lend Lease has discovered how to leverage SoftGrid for a myriad of key IT operations, and it is clearly having a significant impact on the way they do business," said Harry Ruda, CEO, Softricity. "We're pleased they have chosen to rely on Softricity and are realizing so many tangible benefits."

About Softricity:

Softricity enables software to be as instantly available and as easy to use as electricity by transforming applications into network services that no longer need to be installed. The Softricity Desktop provides a software environment that can be securely deployed, managed and immediately available anywhere in the world at a fraction of traditional IT investments - while dramatically improving business agility and delivering a superior end-user experience. Powered by the SoftGrid(R) Platform & Softricity ZeroTouch, The Softricity Desktop employs the company's patented application virtualization, intelligent on-demand delivery and policy-based management technologies to save enterprises over 80% in application management costs, 30% in help desk costs and realize a four-fold increase in user up-time. Global customers include AIG, Blue Cross Blue Shield Kansas City, Northeastern University, Prudential, Raytheon, sanofi-aventis and Suncor Energy. Softricity is a partner with Microsoft (Gold Certified), IBM, HP and VMware. For more information visit http://www.softricity.com.