A-dec Puts Teeth Into Enterprise Systems Management With Unicenter TNG.

ISLANDIA, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 3, 1999--

Dental Equipment Manufacturer Expects Investment In CA Software

To Pay For Itself Within Months

Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) today announced that A-dec, an Oregon-based manufacturer of sophisticated dental equipment, has selected CA's Unicenter TNG to help reduce costs, improve service delivery, and align mission-critical data center operations with the company's emerging business challenges.

With international distribution centers and a global dealer network, privately-held A-dec sells products in the U.S., Canada and more than 100 countries worldwide. As its business continues to grow, so does the need to quickly disseminate information. Implementation of an ERP system and initiatives like ISO (International Standards Organization) certification have caused information requirements to nearly quadruple in the past year alone.

"We needed a solution that would enable us to manage growth in our data center workload, network traffic, and service requirements without increasing IT staff or costs," said A-dec Chief Information Officer Keith Bearden. "We also needed to integrate third-party utilities into our overall IT framework."

A-dec selected Unicenter TNG after a thorough evaluation that emphasized openness, standards, and strength of partnerships with other vendors in the performance management arena. "Now that Unicenter TNG is on board, we are confident that we can broaden the scope of our enterprise management activities without increasing staff," said Bearden.

A-dec's 22-person support staff handles applications, help desk, systems administration, network and workstation support. Using Unicenter TNG as a centralized point for network administration has allowed A-dec to deploy a host of new Windows NT servers without adding any additional staff.

"Our research indicated that in many companies, such an increase in the number of servers would require the equivalent of another full-time NT administrator," said Bearden. "We are confident that Unicenter TNG will enable our current staff to keep up with continued network growth and our commitment to deliver more elaborate file and print services, document management, and e-mail services." A-dec predicts that staff savings alone could return its investment in Unicenter TNG within months.

A-dec's immediate concern is managing its Y2K issues. By centrally automating enterprise-wide asset management with Unicenter TNG, A-dec immediately took a significant step in its Y2K compliance effort. Unicenter TNG made it possible to automatically build a comprehensive repository of IT assets, helping A-dec determine which assets warranted Y2K attention, and how those assets impacted business operations. Moreover, Unicenter TNG once again demonstrated that it could reduce costs by automating tasks that would otherwise have to be performed manually.

"Using Unicenter TNG's Business Process Views, we collected enough data about our applications and devices that we could better prioritize our Y2K initiatives and more effectively focus our resources," said Bearden. "Without Unicenter TNG, we estimated that it would require three months of manual effort to collect this asset information. Unicenter TNG collected the same information, running without manual intervention at night, in only two weeks."

A-dec's IT environment supports NetWare 4.1, Windows NT, Sequent Dynix, Microsoft's desktop applications, an Oracle database, Oracle Enterprise Manager, Cisco Systems' CiscoWorks, Sequent's CommandPoint Viewpoint and Baan's Enterprise Resource Planning Software. Unicenter TNG's Real World Interface will become the common interface for all performance and monitoring tools under Unicenter TNG management, further stretching scarce training dollars.

"It's a huge advantage not having to train our systems administrators on different systems when you're managing a diverse environment," said Bearden. Unicenter TNG creates a tight operating environment in which all these tools can be managed from a central location using a common interface."

Another of A-dec's pressing concerns is to gain and maintain network management control, especially availability and performance issues. Because network downtime has been a concern, Unicenter TNG network agents will be deployed and integrated with CiscoWorks to enable a proactive, central point of management for the entire enterprise. A-dec plans to utilize Unicenter TNG's ability to perform real-time monitoring and deliver proactive alerts to the network administrators.

Automated software delivery is also critical to reducing unnecessary loads on staff and total costs of ownership. A-dec plans to use Unicenter TNG to automatically propagate new system and application software, as well as updates and software patches, across the company's growing landscape of desktops.

"Unicenter TNG's software delivery module is absolutely critical to our ability to manage a large number of desktops with a limited number of personnel," said Bearden. "The system works at night on an unattended basis. When knowledge workers come into work the next morning, their systems are up-to-date with the latest software and in-synch. Best of all, we don't have to touch a single desktop."

A-dec is gradually moving to a "lights out" data center. To that end, the company plans to utilize Unicenter TNG's Advanced Storage Option for automated backup of the Windows NT environment. "We expect tremendous savings from automating the backup effort," said Bearden.

Computer Associates International, Inc. (NYSE:CA), the world leader in mission-critical business computing, provides software, support and integration services in more than 100 countries around the world. CA has more than 13,000 employees and had revenue of $5.1 billion in calendar year 1998.

For more information about CA, please call 516-342-5224 or email [e-mail]. CA's World Wide Web address is www.cai.com.

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