Banyan extends StreetTalk for Windows NT with robust messaging capabilities.

WESTBORO, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 19, 1996--

Provides Banyan customers integration with multiple platforms And

standards

As part of an ongoing effort to provide network services on multiple platforms, Banyan Systems Inc., (NASDAQ:BNYN), today introduced Intelligent Messaging for Windows NT, a messaging service that will deliver highly scaleable client/server messaging to customers deploying Banyan's VINES and Windows NT in their networking environments. Additionally, with its support of the Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI), the product demonstrates Banyan's continued commitment to open standards.

Combined, Intelligent Messaging for Windows NT and the recently released and award-winning StreetTalk for Windows NT provide a much needed and extremely exciting combination of directory and messaging services to the NT platform in a complementary fashion, leveraging the rich operating system and application server capabilities of NT. The architectures of StreetTalk and Intelligent Messaging have proven to scale to the largest of corporations, encompassing thousands of servers and tens of thousands of users. All of this comes without the cost of deploying NT Domains and Exchange.

Because of the tight integration with Banyan's widely deployed StreetTalk directory service, Intelligent Messaging offers customers an enterprise messaging infrastructure with unmatched scalability, reliability, ease-of-use and low cost of ownership. Intelligent Messaging also allows companies to easily reach and communicate efficiently with customers and business partners on the extended enterprise, from within the corporate environment and externally over the Internet.

"Intelligent Messaging, available now for both VINES and Windows NT platforms, offers customers a secure and cost-effective way to deploy large-scale messaging networks," said Mike Wixon, director of product management for Banyan Systems, Inc. "This latest product underscores our dedication to delivering a well integrated, comprehensive solution for extending our customers networking environments."

Support for Open Protocols And Interfaces

A set of interfaces and software developed by Microsoft for enabling applications in Windows 95 and Windows NT operating environments to interact with many different messaging systems using a single interface, Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI), enables customers to support critical desktop messaging applications in the infrastructure of their choice. With Intelligent Messaging For Windows NT, Banyan now supports the MAPI 1.0 Service Provider Interfaces for Address Book and Transport for Windows 95 clients to StreetTalk and Intelligent Messaging, respectively. Support for Windows NT clients will appear in a later release.

In addition to MAPI support, Banyan reaffirmed its commitment to supporting open standards in a number of recent announcements. Through its Coordinate.com brand, Banyan has embraced standards with its Switchboard Internet directory service; its BeyondMail Internet Edition family of SMTP e-mail software; its partnership with Software.com to provide the first open standards-based, directory integrated, intranet messaging server; and future plans to provide Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) compliance in its directory offerings.

A Foundation for Powerful Business Applications

Intelligent Messaging supports function-rich applications, like Banyan's world-class BeyondMail e-mail client. This combination gives leading organizations an effective way to deploy powerful business solutions. Intelligent Messaging lets users use message attributes to find, view and organize messages in ways that are specific to applications. This built-in application support makes it easier to share common information with multiple users, integrate other communications mechanisms, like fax services, easily mail to users on the Internet, and provide a single point of administration, regardless of the applications used.

Start It and Forget It

With Intelligent Messaging, all servers on the network are used to route traffic, so a message can follow more than one route to any given destination. Because the system is network-aware and intelligent, it can automatically select the most cost-effective route. Intelligent Messaging analyzes the priority, size, destination and transfer cost of each message before sending it.

Intelligent Messaging is very easy to maintain and adding a new server is practically effortless. Backup is provided by standard network backup routines and, as part of the network services, messages stored are fully protected in the event of failure by the network's auto-recovery features. These built-in management capabilities increase reliability and allow administrators to literally "start it and forget it."

Advanced Self-Managing Features

Intelligent Messaging further simplifies administration with automatic configuration capabilities that allow users to set system parameters such as maximum disk space per mail box and expiration times. System-generated alerts allow proactive management of a variety of significant events, like low-service disk space, full mailboxes and configuration problems. The system also notifies administrators of janitor failures, such as disk cleanup and file maintenance. Self-managing features enable administrators to perform timely maintenance and minimize downtime.

"We are extremely satisfied with the performance of Intelligent Messaging for Windows NT," said Ian Fraser, consulting engineer for Energy Australia. "Intelligent Messaging integrated with StreetTalk provides us with the ability to deploy Windows NT in our environment, eliminating the need for Domains. As a result, since the same administrator managing the Banyan network is also responsible for managing the messaging system, our cost-of-ownership is reduced. This provides our company with a productive and competitive edge."

PRICING AND AVAILABILITY

Intelligent Messaging V1.1 for Windows NT will be available in November and costs $1495 per server. The MAPI service providers are $20 per seat and are now shipping.

CONTACT: Anne Reilly

Banyan Systems Inc.

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Kristen Gariepy

LNS Communications

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