CA's Unicenter TNG Passes the Test At Edmonds School District; Advanced Help Desk, Software Delivery, and Network Management Capabilities Improve Services For 20,000+ Students.

ISLANDIA, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 8, 1998--Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) today announced that Edmonds School District, a technology-driven agency responsible for educating over 20,000 students, has selected CA's Unicenter TNG as part of an aggressive program to update and manage a growing IT network distributed across 40 campuses. Unicenter TNG will promote better service levels, higher availability, and improved asset control and decrease the District's total costs of ownership.

"Unicenter TNG allows us to expand our network and improve the delivery of information services to our users, while still maintaining stability in our labor structure," said Lee Kulla, Edmond School District's technical services supervisor. "It was very important for us to deploy tools that would free our people from mundane administration activities so they could concentrate on important issues, such as delivering services to the students and staff."

Approximately 5,000 PCs, Macintosh systems and Windows NT servers constitute the Edmonds School District's heterogeneous environment. The school district wrote an RFP and solicited bids for an integrated solution that included help desk services, asset management, event management, remote control, performance management, software delivery, and management of Microsoft Exchange email servers.

"We received other proposals, but only Unicenter TNG satisfied all the requirements for integrating a full range of functions," said Kulla. "No other solution came close to providing the seamless integration of all elements needed to support our rigid IT requirements, and no other proposal delivered the robust functionality of Unicenter TNG's Advanced Help Desk."

Of greatest concern was the District's obsolete help desk software, which could not keep pace with a growing workload created by more technically savvy users. Network management was spotty and reactive, suffering from point solutions that failed to give administrators advance warning of threatening trends or events Installing software and maintaining an accurate inventory of IT assets was labor intensive for this geographically dispersed institution. Internet access and availability are also major considerations for Edmonds.

To overcome these challenges, the District wanted to deploy an enterprise-level help desk and subsequently integrate that function within a comprehensive enterprise management infrastructure that addressed every issue in its expanding IT environment.

Help-desk personnel needed the added capabilities Unicenter TNG provides through automated alerts and Business Process Views to improve system availability and service level delivery. The Unicenter TNG Advanced Help Desk (AHD) has empowered help desk staff and end-users to resolve technical problems, increase productivity, and improve service levels, while keeping the IS support staff small and productive.

"Thanks to Unicenter TNG, our increasingly complicated systems, networks, databases and applications are now managed by a stable number of technicians," said Kulla. "We are doing more work with a constant staff and at the same time achieving better network management. In short, Unicenter TNG is enabling us to become more productive."

With every classroom in the school district connected to the World Wide Web, thousands of devices had to be secured and managed. By seamlessly managing the school district's network from a single point of control, Unicenter addresses virtually every administrative concern. "Unicenter TNG will enable us to manage every aspect of our complex enterprise under a single comprehensive umbrella," said Kulla.

Additionally, Unicenter TNG's advanced Software Delivery capability is playing an important role in managing Edmonds' growing population of geographically dispersed desktops. The school district will utilize Unicenter TNG to distribute new software and upgrades to machines across the network, as well as perform complete inventories of applications residing on every desktop.

"Previously, we had to dispatch people to the various schools and facilities to standardize desktops or deliver software patches - a chore which represented an enormous drain on our resources," said Kulla. "Unicenter TNG's Software Delivery feature helps us standardize our desktop environments while improving responsiveness to users."

"Unicenter TNG's Asset Management and Software Delivery components add rationality to the infrastructure management process," said Kulla. "Unicenter TNG offers an excellent way to track where all IT assets are installed, and to gather statistics that let us know when upgrades are necessary. Once all of the desktops are standardized, we will use Unicenter TNG's Software Delivery to help us with the huge task of keeping all desktops on the same software version."

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.

Edmonds School District manages 24 elementary, 4 middle, 5 high schools, and 6 support sites in Lynnwood, Washington. For more information, contact Edmonds School District, 20420 68th Ave. West, Lynnwood, WA 98036, or phone Community Affairs 425-670-7044, fax [phone], or visit the school district's web site at http://www.edmonds.webnet.edu. (*or email [e-mail])

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