Candle advances the state of the art for systems management solutions; the Candle Command Center redefines paradigm for managing the availability and resources of the enterprise.

DALLAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 14, 1995--Candle Corp. Tuesday announced the Candle Command Center, a highly advanced and comprehensive systems management solution designed to meet the growing challenges to control cost and assure availability in today's complex computing environment.

The Candle Command Center employs several powerful new features -- such as visual programming -- that are designed to meet the increasing threats to the availability of critical business applications resulting from the proliferation of complex computing environments.

The Candle Command Center is the first comprehensive systems management solution to offer both packaged solutions for specific platforms and component-based solutions which users can configure to manage virtually any enterprise environment, with diverse platforms and thousands of systems.

"The Candle Command Center is the only system which truly addresses the kinds of problems we're seeing with our customers as they make the transition to large client/server environments," said Candle Chairman and CEO, Aubrey Chernick.

"In fact, as we look at the problems they faced -- the need for great flexibility, the need for time and labor-saving features -- we couldn't see any other way to solve their requirements without some of the truly groundbreaking designs we've incorporated into the Candle Command Center."

Scalability and Flexibility

The Candle Command Center is designed to meet both the technical challenges of managing system, network and console resources and the challenge of availability management of mission-critical applications, regardless of the resources they use.

The Candle Command Center is the world's first solution that manages both network and systems resources and applications spanning desktops, UNIX midrange systems and large MVS-based mainframes. It is also the only solution that can be managed from a variety of hub platforms, tailored to the scope of the systems to be managed.

Users have the flexibility to choose the management platform, depending upon cost, size, hardware availability, and user preference. The Candle Command Center can be managed on Windows NT, AIX or MVS hubs. With an advanced object architecture utilizing the powerful servers and agents, it is the only management solution that can be scaled from a few platforms to thousands of systems.

Unique Productivity Benefits

With the rapid growth of client/server and distributed systems, the demands on systems management and administration staff and resources is increasing exponentially even as IS departments are required to constrain and even decrease budgets.

To meet this challenge, Candle Command Centers utilize several unique and highly advanced technologies designed specifically to maximize staff productivity and conserve both human and technical resources. -0-

-- Visual Programming: The Candle Command Center is the world's first systems management solution to utilize visual programming to create alert and automation rules, greatly reducing the cost and time of programming and code maintenance.

-- Remote Object Distribution of Alert Rules and Automatic Change Administration: Additional staff time and costs are saved through a unique built-in drag-and-drop rule distribution technology. Further, once alerts and automation policies have been defined and distributed, they can be automatically updated whenever the rules are changed, another significant labor-saving benefit.

-- Common User Interface: Whether monitoring desktops or mainframes, the Candle Command Center utilizes a common user interface for administration and viewing regardless of size, platform, system or network focus. Data from remote agents is normalized for common display. For example, when looking at data from HP-UX, SunOS or AIX, the data can be analyzed in common tables. The common user interfaces and data displays increase staff productivity and minimize training costs. They also eliminate the need to maintain a staff of single system specialists working with a collection of disparate and non-integrated management tools.

Responding to Organizational Requirements

Today, most business are characterized by frequent reorganization and constantly changing management needs. Because of the flexible, component-based architecture, Candle Command Centers can be easily configured for particular management requirements, then easily reconfigured to meet changing organizational needs.

For example, data center staff in New York have the responsibility for managing all UNIX systems in the Northeast. After a reorganization, they gain the responsibility of managing LANS in the same region. A simple reconfiguration of the Candle Command Center allows them to use existing staff and resources to accomodate the new demands.

With Candle's unique multiple hub management capability, disparate Candle Command Centers can be connected to provide new management views and increase system reliability.

Candle Command Center Components

Candle Command Centers provide organizations with the flexibility to configure systems management views by platform, department or business system, based on each organization's needs. This cost-effective solution for managing resources and application availability in the distributed enterprise consists of the following components: Candle Management Workstation, Candle Management Server and OMEGAMON Monitoring Agents. -0-

-- Candle Management Workstation: The Candle Management Workstation is an intuitive, object-oriented GUI that is used for visual programming of alerts and automation rules and for managing the performance and availability of systems and applications. The workstation assists users in creating and monitoring object-based alert rules (situations) across platforms using visual programming and remote object distribution through a common user interface. Through information provided by the Candle Management Server, the workstation, gives real-time reporting on all managed objects. The workstation is currently OS/2-based, and is being migrated to Windows NT and MOTIF.

-- Candle Management Server: The Candle Management Server is a powerful point of integration, or hub, for the management of the enterprise. The Candle Management Server offers users tremendous flexibility in choosing combinations of servers and agents. The server is an advanced collection and control engine for alerts received from managed systems and subsystems, collecting, compiling and evaluating data received from the agents before forwarding to the workstation. It is the only management server spanning MVS, UNIX and Windows NT implementations. The Candle Management Server includes an integrated inference engine, based on forward chaining, where rules for alerts and automation can be defined through visual programming.

-- OMEGAMON Monitoring Agents: OMEGAMON Monitoring Agents can monitor operating systems, databases systems and on-line systems. These system-specific intelligent agents can collect and filter information locally, and send alerts to the Candle Management Server when threshold-based conditions are met, eliminating unnecessary data transmission between remote systems and the server, conserving network resources.

Candle Command Centers can be combined to provide a centralized, cross-platform systems management solution to flexibly manage every level of systems availability and performance throughout the corporate computing environment.

Candle Command Center Domains

The true power and benefits of the Candle Command Center are realized when the technologies are leveraged across an enterprise computing infrastructure. In the next several months, Candle will provide Candle Command Center functionality for several platforms and systems: -0-

Mainframe Solutions (MVS)

--  Sysplex for IBM parallel mainframe environments
--  CICSplex
--  BatchPipes

Midrange and Distributed Systems

--  UNIX -- AIX, HP-UX and SunOS
--  Windows NT
--  Oracle and Sybase

Network and LANs

--  NetWare
--  SNMP Gateways to NetView/6000 and HP OpenView

Candle has previously announced OMEGAMONs for UNIX, Windows NT, Sysplex, CICSplex and BatchPipes environments. These solutions have been re-engineered and reconfigured to capture the power and flexibility of the Candle Command Center. New Candle Command Center solutions can be utilized in conjunction with existing Candle OMEGACENTER products.

Candle Technologies (CT)

The Candle Command Center is built on an advanced technology infrastructure called Candle Technologies (CT). CT includes a number of cutting-edge innovations. Its open capabilities incorporate POSIX -- IEEE 1001.4a and DCE, not only on UNIX but also on MVS.

Object facilities include the use of distributed object technology for administrative, alert and automation functions. Protocol-independent communications is achieved by using TCP/IP or SNA sockets on both MVS and UNIX.

Company Background

Candle is the world's leading independent developer and supplier of systems management software to manage the availability and performance of critical computing systems and business applications. The company was founded in 1977 by Chernick and has more than 1,100 employees worldwide.

Candle's OMEGACENTER software includes a complete line of products for end-to-end systems management, including automation, status management, application integration and database management. The Availability Command Center solution helps corporations manage the availability of critical business applications. Together these products provide effective, integrated systems management in more than 5,000 data centers in more than 30 countries worldwide. -0-

Note to Editors: Products mentioned herein may be trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

CONTACT: Candle Corp., Santa Monica, Calif.

Craig Campbell/Philip Little, 310/829-5800

or at UniForum 1995 -- Booth No. 1142

or

Miller Communications, Marina del Rey, Calif.

Chris Gunning/Tim Beyers, 310/822-4669

cgunning(at-sign)millerwest.com

tbeyers(at-sign)millerwest.com