BMC West Selects CA's Unicenter TNG Over IBM/Tivoli for Proactive End-to-End Enterprise Management.

ISLANDIA, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 14, 1998--

Leading Building Materials Retailer Chooses CA Software and Services To Improve Service Levels and Achieve Quicker ROI

Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) today announced that BMC West Corp., one of the largest lumberyard and building materials retailers in the Western United States, has selected CA's Unicenter TNG to strategically manage its rapidly expanding information technology environment. BMC West chose Unicenter TNG after extensively evaluating IBM/Tivoli's TME and other IT management products.

"Managing BMC West's growth is our primary concern," said John Cooper, BMC West chief information officer. "We determined that Unicenter TNG was the best solution for delivering high service levels to our users without increasing IT staff."

Through a series of acquisitions, BMC West has grown rapidly in recent years, doubling the number of its lumberyards and retail outlets. The dramatic expansion rate has placed enormous burdens on BMC West's IT department to meet new service level objectives.

According to Cooper, a major concern for BMC West was ensuring that any system it implemented would provide a favorable return-on-investment. "To us, that meant answering two questions," said Cooper. "First, would the software do the job? Second, would the software serve as an investment, rather than an expense?"

After evaluating IBM/Tivoli's TME and other alternatives, Cooper and his staff concluded that Unicenter TNG was the only practical solution to meet the company's stringent requirements. Not only did Unicenter TNG adhere to the company's strict technical specifications, it also provided superior integration between mission-critical components such as event management and help desk administration.

BMC West is working with CA's Global Professional Services organization to facilitate the Unicenter TNG implementation. "We had the necessary resources, but we wanted to work alongside CA's GPS specialists to even more quickly optimize our return on investment. With all of the software implementations I have been involved in over the years, this is one of the smoothest I have ever encountered."

With Unicenter TNG, BMC West is becoming more proactive in its strategic approach to managing systems, networks, applications and databases. The company will now be able to handle help desk calls faster, take remote control of its desktops, track software and hardware inventory, deliver software to desktops and UNIX servers from a single console, and receive filtered alerts from all devices identified on the network.

"Technical issues are often tied to a server or network problem," said Cooper. "We want to be able to rapidly and precisely isolate the source of a problem, and proactively resolve it before users are impacted. That requires our systems management framework to be tightly coupled with the help desk, so that we can distinguish immediately between a failed network segment and a server that has come off-line. By installing Unicenter TNG, we are able to grow the business, better utilize existing resources, and defer costly increases in IT staffing levels."

The company is currently implementing Unicenter TNG's Advanced Help Desk (AHD) to centralize help desk administration for more than 500 desktops and servers in 11 states. "We expect AHD to improve responsiveness and our ability to be more proactive, and to balance existing help desk resources in a company that is no longer small enough for everyone to know who to call for help when they have a problem," said Cooper.

BMC West will run every aspect of its IT function through AHD, creating a knowledge base of technical problems and solutions. A subset of the database will be made available to end-users through the company's intranet.

The company has already recognized AHD's ability to eliminate multiple calls for the same problem. For example, network outages affecting five sites used to generate a minimum of five separate calls to the help desk. Now, instead of generating one problem ticket for each unique event, Unicenter TNG's AHD automatically consolidates such calls.

BMC West is also installing Unicenter TNG's Software Delivery option, under which it will centrally export new releases of systems and applications software across the network, eliminating the need to disrupt desktop owners. The company will combine Unicenter TNG's integrated Asset Management and Software Delivery solutions to better control the configuration of remote desktops.

"Even thin clients need an occasional upgrade," said Cooper. "With Unicenter TNG, we can monitor every desktop to ensure that devices are not reconfigured without the proper authorization."

To manage the IBM RS/6000 servers running the company's retail locations, BMC West is installing Unicenter TNG agents at each location. The agents will allow the company to proactively monitor the performance of each RS/6000 workstation, watching for critical constraints, such as disk space. With the Unicenter TNG Remote Control Option, BMC West's technical support personnel will take control of remote devices, fine-tune systems, and resolve technical issues from a central location.

Unicenter TNG is an integrated enterprise management solution that enables organizations to manage all IT resources, encompassing heterogeneous networks, systems, applications, and databases. It provides comprehensive end-to-end enterprise management for TCP/IP, SNA, IPX/SPX, and DECnet, Frame Relay and ATM networks, and 40 platforms including desktops, Windows NT, UNIX, AS/400, NetWare and mainframe environments.

Unicenter TNG is the only fully integrated management solution covering network discovery, topology, performance, events and status, security, software distribution, storage, workload, help desk, change management and other functions for traditional and distributed computing environments, as well as for the Internet and intranets. Unicenter TNG's intelligent manager/agent technology delivers highly scalable management of the entire computing environment, including hardware and software.

Computer Associates International, Inc. (NYSE: CA), with headquarters in Islandia, N.Y., is the world leader in mission-critical business software. The company develops, licenses and supports more than 500 integrated products that include enterprise computing and information management, application development, manufacturing and financial applications. CA has over 11,000 people in 160 offices in 43 countries and had revenue of $4.7 billion in fiscal year 1998. CA can be reached by visiting http://www.cai.com on the World Wide Web, emailing [e-mail], or calling 1-516-342-5224.

Based in Boise, Idaho, BMC West Corporation, www.bmcwest.com, is a leading regional distributor and retailer of building materials in the Western United States, selling primarily to professional contractors, as well as to project-oriented consumers. In addition to distributing products from manufacturers, the Company conducts value-added conversion activities which include pre-hanging doors, fabricating roof trusses, pre-assembling windows and pre-cutting lumber to meet customer specifications. The Company operates 57 building materials centers located in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Texas, Utah, and Washington.

All product names referenced are the trademarks of their respective companies.

   CONTACT: Diana Bolkas, [phone] or [e-mail]