Leading Unix Vendors Choose OpenVision to Support System Administration Tool Suite

Standardized, Modular Object Services and Marketing Savvy Make The Difference

OpenVision Now Only Vendor Supporting Both Administration and Systems Management Applications for Distributed Systems

PLEASANTON, Calif., November 3, 1993 -- OpenVision, an emerging leader in distributed systems management, today revealed it has signed letters of intent with USL/Novell, Pyramid Technologies, UnisysŪ and Siemens/Nixdorf to distribute the suite of system administration applications currently comprising USL/Novell's Distributed Manager (DM) project. The addition of these products makes OpenVision the only distributed systems management software company providing a full line of both administration and management products. OpenVision also announced it has been named as a Novell NDMS partner.

After initially distributing the existing suite of products in their current form, OpenVision will migrate them into the modular, object services-based OpenVision environment as a way to eventually integrate them into Novell's NDMS. Migrating the suite of products, including , to the OpenVision environment also will make them available on a wide array of platforms. Coming on the heels of Novell's recent introduction of NDMS, today's announcement highlights the industry trend towards modular, object services-based environments and away from monolithic frameworks.

The individual OEMs will continue to support and evolve their respective products within the OpenVision environment, and also will be able to offer the consolidated product suite as their own private-label system administration tools.

"These companies have shown the foresight and vision to recognize the future of distributed systems management is modular, object-based solutions, not inflexible, monolithic frameworks," said Michael S. Fields, OpenVision's founder, chairman and chief executive officer. "By obtaining the rights to these products, OpenVision becomes the only vendor offering its customers a single source for distributed computing system administration and management products, services and support, and it takes us one step closer to our vision of being the major unifying factor in the open systems industry."

The OpenVision environment and NDMS are at the forefront of the trend away from monolithic, framework-based systems, offering a robust suite of modular, standards-based, distributed object services -- a "framework-less" platform -- that provides interoperable access to OpenVision applications and other industry leading network and systems management tools.

"Our long-standing commitment to standards and our belief in the future of distributed object services moved us to select OpenVision as the best way to evolve our DM products," said _______________, president and chief executive officer of USL/Novell. "We are impressed with OpenVision's standards-based, object-oriented approach, as well as their sophisticated approach to the distributed systems management market, and we are excited about the future of this industry and the role we can play together in it.

According to , transferring these products to OpenVision also ensures they will continue to have the broadest availability because the identical, interoperable systems administration solution will be obtainable from several sources."

"We share the industry vision of modular, object services-based systems management because it offers our customers the freedom of choice," said Person X from Company Y. "With themodular environments such as OpenVision's, customers can access applications from the environment's desktop, via pre-existing frameworks or through an individual application's graphical user interface, depending on the customer's current system configuration."

Modular, standardized, object-based environments offer enhanced interoperability and much greater flexibility in choosing best-of-class applications and tools, and are inherently extensible. Frameworks, on the other hand, are monolithic structures of interdependent services that offer more limited choices.

"Customers today want a modular environment because it allows them to tailor the functionality they need, quickly deploy it, and rapidly upgrade the environment to support changing business needs," said ________________.

System administration tools and applications provide network services required by system operators, such as print management, user group management, I/O management and simple device management. Systems management applications, on the other hand, enable MIS personnel to manage the overall computer system's operations, performance, storage and security. Both classes of products provide networks of distributed computing resources with the kinds of controls and services MIS professionals have come to expect from their mainframe environments.

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