Clarke American Checks, Inc. Chooses Boole & Babbage COMMAND/POST as its Ultimate Technology Manager.

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 4, 1997--Affirming its position as the leader in end-to-end availability management, Boole & Babbage, Inc. (NASDAQ:BOOL) today announced that Clarke American Checks, Inc., a specialty printing company, has chosen COMMAND/POST to centrally manage its IT infrastructure. Clarke American will use COMMAND/POST to increase availability of its mission-critical manufacturing applications which are distributed across host and client/server systems.

"As we extend our business to run on a wider range of platforms, it is essential that we maintain our commitment to the financial institutions that rely on our services, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week," said Mark Estes, manager of network and desktop services at Clarke American. "With COMMAND/POST's centralized availability view and automation capabilities, we'll be able to immediately identify and respond to problems across our distributed systems. This will increase enterprisewide availability and ensure that the business keeps running."

Annually, Clarke American produces 40 million orders of checks and share drafts which are marketed through more than 4,200 banks, credit unions and other financial institutions.

Orders are received at Clarke American headquarters in San Antonio, TX, and then processed and automatically forwarded to print production sites. To maintain its reputation for having the highest accuracy rate in the check printing business -- 99.92 percent -- and timely delivery of goods, Clarke's Information Technologies organization must ensure constant availability of all of its computing resources. These resources support the company's geographically-dispersed print production applications.

Clarke brought in COMMAND/POST to serve as a centralized point-of-control for viewing and correlating all critical alerts generated by its host and remote servers. Cabletron Spectrum, which will be used to manage Clarke's SNMP network, will also forward alerts to COMMAND/POST. From there, users will be able to apply automated corrective action or notify a technician to fix the problem onsite.

"With its highly scalable architecture, COMMAND/POST makes it possible to oversee and integrate the management of basically every element that makes up a computing enterprise," said Gary Read, senior marketing director, Boole & Babbage. "This gives Clarke American the confidence to add new systems and technologies as its business needs grow -- without worrying about how the technologies will be managed."

COMMAND/POST, the flagship product in the Boole & Babbage Enterprise Automation solution set, presents an integrated, consolidated view of the entire IT topology, including all levels and types of hardware, the expanding middleware layer and business-critical, end-user applications. COMMAND/POST gives users a central command and control point for availability, fault management and automated operations throughout the enterprise. It automatically correlates, refines and synthesizes availability and fault data generated by virtually any computer, workstation, LAN, WAN and communications device.

Headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, Clarke American Checks, Inc., is a specialty printer of checks, financial forms and other consumer products. With sales exceeding $260 million, the company produces annually more that 40 million orders for checks and share drafts, which are marketed through more than 4,200 banks, credit unions and other financial institutions. Clarke American is part of Caradon plc of Weybridge, Surrey, England. Caradon plc is a holding company with more than 40 businesses worldwide.

Boole & Babbage is the worldwide leader in availability, performance and storage management solutions for distributed systems. Its Enterprise Automation solution set manages application availability from end-to-end, maximizing uptime and reducing operational costs for even the most complex IT enterprises. Through advanced interoperability with leading frameworks and a flexible architecture easily scaled to customer requirements, Boole & Babbage products provide a comprehensive systems management and automation solution for all applications, systems and networks -- from the mainframe to the desktop. For more information, call 800/544-2152. -0-

Note to Editors: Boole & Babbage is a registered trademark of Boole & Babbage, Inc. COMMAND/Post is a trademarks of Boole & Babbage, Inc. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.

CONTACT: Boole & Babbage, Inc.

Shelly Gordon, 408/526-3430

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http://www.boole.com