AViiON Server Delivers Highest PeopleSoft Payroll 7.5 Benchmark On Windows NT.

WESTBORO, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 1, 1999--

AV 8700 Server with CLARiiON Full Fibre Channel Storage

processes at rate of 68,881 employees per hour to

Surpass Previous PeopleSoft Record

Data General Corporation today announced the highest published benchmark results to date for PeopleSoft 7.5 Payroll on the Microsoft Windows NT Server operating environment. Using the company's high-end AViiON NT server, Data General was able to process the entire payroll of an extra-large database (representing a company of 144,000 active employees) in 126 minutes, a rate of 68,881 employees per hour.

In all, four benchmark tests of various sized databases were conducted on an AViiON(R) AV 8700 server with four Pentium II Xeon processors using Data General's CLARiiON(R) full Fibre Channel storage and running the Oracle8 database and the Windows NT Server 4.0 Enterprise Edition operating system.

"The performance of the benchmark completed on Data Generals' high-end AViiON server and CLARiiON Fibre Channel storage arrays with PeopleSoft 7.5 Payroll software and the Oracle8 database running on Windows NT represents a major milestone for our customers," said Marc Stillman, vice president of PeopleSoft's Alliance Solution Center. "This benchmark demonstrates that customers can expect outstanding performance with Rev 7.5 on AViiON servers in production Windows NT environments."

"With our focus on supporting high-end, NT based enterprise solutions, Data General was the first vendor to offer PeopleSoft users a performance guarantee program for their Windows NT production environments," said David Flawn, vice president of NT Marketing at Data General. "These results clearly indicate that this level of performance is in keeping with our guarantee program for PeopleSoft. Furthermore, customers can rest assured that the AViiON server platform running Windows NT can cost-effectively meet the requirements of enterprise applications, such as PeopleSoft Payroll. When combined with our high availability cluster capabilities and outstanding service offerings, this extends the reach of high value, Windows based computing to a much wider scope of the ERP marketplace."

Data General's Performance Guarantee for PeopleSoft Users

Data General offers an unmatched packaged-priced hardware and service configuration with benchmark performance guarantee program to users of PeopleSoft software. In accordance with these programs, Data General guarantees that its AViiON servers running PeopleSoft Payroll will perform to the benchmarks just completed by the two companies.

Benchmark Results

Using the AV 8700 server, the benchmark measured four Payroll application business process runtimes running PeopleSoft Payroll and Oracle8 databases on models representing small (8000 active employees), medium (24,000 active employees), large (72,000 active employees), and extra large (144,000 active employees) businesses.

The small database was processed in approximately seven minutes, a rate of 67,926 employees processed per hour. The medium database was processed in approximately 21 minutes, a rate of 68,301 employees processed per hour. The large database was processed in less than 63 minutes, a rate of 68,572 employees processed per hour and the extra-large database was processed in less than 126 minutes, a rate of 68,881 employees processed per hour.

Each test was run on an AViiON AV 8700 configured with four Intel Pentium II Xeon processors at 450 MHz and 2MB Level-2 cache. The system was configured with 4GB ECC memory. Two CLARiiON FC5500 Fibre Channel storage subsystems, each with forty 9GB disks, was used to store the Oracle8 database, Windows NT Server 4.0 operating system, and PeopleSoft Payroll 7.5 software.

AV 8700 Server

The AV 8700, Data General's most powerful high-end Windows NT server, is the industry's first NT server designed specifically for clustering. The AV 8700 has an advanced server chassis that can support two 4-way systems in a high availability, Cluster-in-a-Box(R) configuration, which includes CLARiiON(R) full Fibre Channel storage. In addition, the AViiON system provides customers with an attractive path to 8-way processing and support for future Intel processors.

About the Benchmark

The benchmark study was conducted to determine whether the combination of PeopleSoft 7.5 Payroll, Oracle8 database, and Data General AViiON server running Windows NT Server could efficiently process and scale over a range of processing volumes, especially extra-large database with 144,000 active employees. The objective was to execute and measure typical PeopleSoft Payroll business processes with various data distribution and workload scenarios.

The outstanding results are a reflection of PeopleSoft's commitment to delivering high performance software solutions for enterprise environments and Data General's mission to build open, scalable server and storage platforms that excel in meeting the working needs of commercial environments. The benchmark results underscore that customers can get industry-leading performance from servers based on industry-standard processors when those systems have been engineered to optimize performance in actual working applications, not artificial CPU-centric benchmarks.

PeopleSoft Performance ToolKit Program

The benchmark was conducted as part of PeopleSoft's Performance ToolKit Program that includes Data General and other hardware vendors. The Performance ToolKit Program is part of the PeopleSoft Alliance Solution Center, which incorporates lifecycle testing and tuning, a performance laboratory and showcase center, and performance toolkits with standardized benchmarks and performance models. The results of these benchmark studies are being used to further improve performance in future releases of PeopleSoft products.

About PeopleSoft

PeopleSoft (NASDAQ:PSFT) is a global supplier of enterprise application software for business, education, and government. PeopleSoft solutions for manufacturing, supply chain, financial, project and human resource management are used by more than 2,900 customers worldwide. Headquartered in Pleasanton, California, PeopleSoft employs more than 6,600 people and had 1998 revenues of $1.3 billion. PeopleSoft is on the Word Wide Web at www.peoplesoft.com.

About Data General

Data General (NYSE:DGN), based in Westboro, Massachusetts, is a major supplier of storage and enterprise computing solutions for customers worldwide. The company's products include CLARiiON Fibre Channel storage systems, high-end Windows NT and UNIX AViiON servers, and related software and services. The company reported fiscal 1998 revenues of $1.5 billion. Additional information on the company, its products, and services is available on the Internet at www.dg.com.

AViiON and CLARiiON are registered trademarks of Data General Corporation.

PeopleSoft, the PeopleSoft logo, PeopleTools, PS/nVision, PeopleCode, PeopleBooks, and Red Pepper are registered trademarks, PeopleTalk and "We work in your world." are trademarks of PeopleSoft, Inc.

All brand and product names appearing in the press release may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective holders.