Aprisma Unveils Spectrum 6.0; Provides Unprecedented Visibility and Control of Critical E-Business Networks, Systems and Applications.

Business/Technology Editors

Networld Interop 2000

Booth #7422

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 8, 2000

Aprisma Management Technologies, a pioneer in e-business infrastructure management, today launched the industry's first comprehensive solution to proactively identify, isolate and resolve service outages and degradations that threaten e-business operations. With new advanced root-cause analysis and web-based management capabilities, SPECTRUM(R) 6.0 bridges the gap between legacy network management platforms and technology point tools, providing corporations and service providers crucial visibility and pre-emptive control of today's e-business networks, systems and applications.

In today's complex infrastructure environments, the primary challenges facing businesses are ensuring security, managing the impact of adding both new customers and expanded services to the infrastructure, and connecting back-end systems with e-business. Spectrum 6.0 is the first comprehensive solution to help businesses effectively manage and control these challenges by providing not only end-to-end, top-to-bottom visibility of the e-business infrastructure, but also real-time business impact analysis of slowdowns and outages.

"Customers need a complete view of the business operation, integrating historical, real-time and predictive information," said Caryn Gillooly, Senior Analyst with the Hurwitz Group. "Those products that offer real-time business impact analysis and provide intelligent solutions that understand the relationships and dependencies between today's transport, computing and application components, will improve and accelerate e-business operations as they ultimately meet and exceed customer expectations."

Spectrum 6.0 will serve as the foundation for Aprisma's infrastructure network and systems management technology code named Prism. (See related release, "Aprisma Demonstrates Next Wave E-Business Management Technology at Networld+Interop," May 8, 2000.)

SPECTRUM 6.0 delivers key features focused on network and application availability, including:

-- SERVICE ASSURANCE - SPECTRUM is the first service level management product that understands the complex relationships and interdependencies between networks, systems and applications. Leveraging its patented modeling engine, SPECTRUM correlates network and application performance, automatically pin-pointing the cause of a problem, prioritizing it according to business impact, and proactively taking corrective measures to accelerate service restoration.

-- RULES-FREE MANAGEMENT -SPECTRUM eliminates the need to manually program complex event correlation rules any time a move, add or change occurs in the environment. New adaptive auto learning capabilities significantly lower operational costs, while improving mean-time-to-repair.

-- HANDS-FREE PROBLEM MANAGEMENT - New root-cause analysis capabilities enable IT departments to efficiently and effectively isolate infrastructure problems, quickly and automatically determining the impact of a problem on business users before it threatens to impact service. The new auto discovery facilities in SPECTRUM 6.0 provide greater control and automated scheduling, ensuring up-to-the minute, accurate asset and inventory reporting through new support for Cisco and Cabletron discovery protocols. In addition, new logical network fault isolation identifies service degradations in ATM, Frame Relay and VLAN environments.

-- HASSLE-FREE MANAGEMENT - Unlike competitors which require multiple, low-level element management systems to collect information, SPECTRUM directly manages solutions from the industry's leading vendors, including 3Com, Cisco, Compaq, Enterasys, Extreme, Lucent, Motorola, Microsoft, Newbridge, Nortel, Oracle, Riverstone and SAP. With SPECTRUM 6.0, Aprisma will add support for new devices from F5, Alcatel, Checkpoint, Copper Mountain, Foundry, Juniper, Nokia, Packeteer and Redback.

In addition, new web-based management tools deliver flexible executive reporting, administrative consoles, and help desk facilities.

-- OPEN DATA ACCESS - SPECTRUM 6.0 supports Corba and native SQL, making critical business information collected by SPECTRUM available for both business and technical analysis. This new feature provides a foundation for capacity planning, predictive analysis and customer service reports.

PRICING AND AVAILABILITY

SPECTRUM 6.0 is available in 60 days, with pricing starting at $40,000.

About Aprisma

Aprisma Management Technologies is a leading provider of intelligent, "night and day" multivendor management solutions that meet the service-level requirements of network, enterprise and service provider customers. Aprisma's SPECTRUM suite of management software offers automated, proactive service availability solutions that are integral components of today's mission-critical business and service provider infrastructures. Aprisma's many SPECTRUM customers include Sprint, Rogers Communications, GTE, Alcatel KE, General Motors, NASA, MCI WorldCom, Compaq and Earthlink. Additional information on SPECTRUM and related solutions are available at http:www.aprisma.com or by contacting Aprisma sales at [phone], as well as contacting authorized SPECTRUM resellers worldwide.

SPECTRUM is a registered trademark of Aprisma Management Technologies. All other products or services referenced herein are identified by the trademarks or service marks of their respective companies or organizations.