Boole & Babbage Announces Availability of MainView Explorer at CMG98; Web-Enabled GUI Offers Enhanced Performance Information, Presentation and Manipulation.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 8, 1998--Boole & Babbage(R) (Nasdaq:BOOL) a leader in application and service level management for distributed and legacy systems, today further strengthened the capabilities of its MainView(R) solution with the announcement of availability of MainView Explorer, a greatly simplified method for managing the traditional S/390 and Parallel Sysplex environments.

MainView Explorer is the latest addition to the Explorer family of products, which provide organizations with the flexibility to monitor real-time network information at any time, from any place, while offering seamless interoperability between Boole & Babbage product lines.

MainView Explorer enables companies to proactively manage their S/390 applications from a web-based graphical user interface. This multi-dimensional GUI coupled with Explorer's underlying object-oriented architecture allows users to extend the power of their current systems management investment with complete access to MainView data from any desktop's web browser.

"The greatest advantage of MainView Explorer lies in its ability to transform the data that it receives from MainView into information that can be easily understood by the staff and accessed from a simple web browser," said Paul Mason, vice president of research at IDC. "This gives a wider range of users the ability to see performance-related information and make informed decisions about OS/390 transactions and workloads, resulting in more effective service level management."

From their desktops, users can easily monitor the performance levels of applications and take action when it becomes necessary, empowering users that may be unfamiliar with 3270 to assume more responsibility for a number of management tasks. Actions that may be executed through MainView Explorer include stopping transactions or batch jobs, or altering the priority of OS/390 workloads.

"MainView Explorer offers a state-of-the-art GUI that enables the end-user to view application performance using highly intuitive graphics on the desktop," said Chris O'Connell, senior director of product marketing for MainView. "This means that the full power of MainView--including the ability to execute actions--is more easily accessible to a greater percentage of staff, including occasional MainView users such as operational and management staff interested in an at-a-glance view of their S/390 applications."

By providing detailed information to a central point of control, and automatically adjusting malfunctioning system parameters in Parallel Sysplex or traditional mainframe environments, MainView and MainView Explorer allow users to maximize uptime of their business-critical applications and meet customer service levels. Users can customize views of all systems, subsystems and applications to have a business representation of their entire enterprise.

In addition, Explorer is "ready to use." With the appropriate web browser on the desktop and a corresponding S/390 system, any authorized client is able to utilize the full capabilities of Explorer without the need for any additional software. This results in simplified installation and eliminates the need for software distribution at the client level.

"With this latest enhancement to the MainView solution, Boole & Babbage is furthering its commitment to help customers reduce performance management complexity, while increasing service levels," said O'Connell. "With MainView Explorer, our customers get an unparalleled solution to easily access the performance and automation data inside their mainframe and Parallel Sysplex environments."

About MainView

MainView provides application- and workload-focused performance monitoring, helping system programmers to control service levels. MainView online monitoring provides point-and-shoot navigation, concurrent multi-system access, and Single System Image for viewing data from multiple processing regions or a Parallel Sysplex as a single entity. MainView products for OS/390, CICS, IMS, DBCTL and DB2 are the only fully integrated systems management tools available that can concurrently support Parallel Sysplex and traditional mainframe environments.

About Boole & Babbage

Boole & Babbage is a worldwide leader in availability and service level management for distributed systems. Its Enterprise Automation product lines provide a management solution for the entire IT enterprise that encompasses systems, applications, middleware, databases and Web technologies. The Boole & Babbage set of solutions is currently used by large manufacturing companies, domestic and international government agencies, the majority of the world's largest financial institutions, airlines, IT outsourcers and utilities to improve service levels and reduce IT management costs.

Founded in 1967, Boole & Babbage is the oldest publicly traded independent software vendor in the systems management industry and today is approximately a $225 million company with 930 employees in 43 offices in 26 countries. Corporate headquarters are located in San Jose, California. For more information, visit us on the Web at www.boole.com, or call [phone].

Boole & Babbage, Inc. is a Tivoli (NYSE:IBM) premiere partner, a Hewlett-Packard (NYSE:HWP) premier partner, an IBM (NYSE:IBM) BESTeam Member, and a Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) Solutions Developer.

Note to Editors: Boole & Babbage and MainView(R) are registered trademarks of Boole & Babbage, Inc. All other product names and trademarks mentioned herein are the trademarks of their respective owners.