British Telecom Selects United Devices To Power Virtual Services Platform; Shared Infrastructure Enables Delivery of Business-Critical Applications.

AUSTIN, Texas -- United Devices (UD) announced today that British Telecom (BT), one of the world's leading providers of communications solutions, has selected UD's grid technology to power its virtual services platform, a new managed grid service offering. This network-centric application delivery model ensures mission-critical business functions via Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that govern how customers run applications in a reliable and predictable manner.

The virtual services platform goes beyond traditional utility computing approaches in that it leverages BT's internal assets and network connectivity capabilities to create a real-time provisioning service that is network-aware and SLA focused. With real-time access to network heuristics and the opportunity to manipulate network controls, BT's offering will dynamically bind applications to the most eligible infrastructure components via the UD grid platform. As a result, applications with very large data movement requirements can finally be delivered in a shared services paradigm, while fulfilling bandwidth and low latency requirements.

"What's significant about this approach is the opportunity to leverage BT's connectivity layer to dynamically open and close high-speed data pipes according to data access and movement requirements," said Ben Rouse, United Devices CEO. "This ability renders the need for enterprise data caching obsolete and positions BT to offer a network-centric application delivery service."

The virtual services platform is built on a shared infrastructure that consists of internal BT resources and those contained in its customers' enterprises to assure availability for mission-critical functions like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) by adhering to stringent, policy-based SLAs. By reducing the infrastructure and associated administration costs of running business applications such as Siebel and SAP, BT and its customers will realize significant savings as well as higher levels of application reliability and performance.

"This undertaking is a natural extension of IP VPN Services provided by BT," said Frank Falcon, Head of Innovation Development at BT. "A flexible and scalable grid architecture that supports all of the heterogeneity and complexity inherent in legacy infrastructures was an absolute requirement. UD had the winning architecture and the most credible set of production proof points in regards to implementing enterprise-wide production grids."

BT will initially offer the virtual platform internally and develop managed grid services expertise. BT and UD's joint vision is then to rapidly make it available to customers who are seeking alternatives to their rigid and expensive application infrastructures.

Falcon will speak about the project at UD's annual grid conference, being held March 28-29 in Austin, Texas.

About United Devices

United Devices (UD) provides the most cost-effective and flexible computing capacity available in any form. From traditional application acceleration to enterprise-scale infrastructure virtualization, our software solutions enable companies to achieve the appropriate balance between departmental autonomy and centralized control. UD products are proven to enhance innovation, reduce total cost of ownership and increase service levels for companies in a wide range of industries including Manufacturing, Energy, Life Sciences, Government and Telecommunications. UD also powers the world's largest production grids including grid.org and the IBM World Community Grid. Find out more at www.ud.com.

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