Cybermation Enables Parallel Sysplex Clustering Exploitation; IBM Recognizes Cybermation With Its Advanced Cluster Proven Mark.

Business/Technology Editors

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 28, 2000

Cybermation Inc., the Canadian provider of integrated enterprise systems management software solutions, announced the April early release of ESP Sysplex V1.0 at the Association for Computer Operations Management (AFCOM) Conference today. This product will allow users to exploit throughput and high availability advantages provided by IBM(R)'s S/390(R) Parallel Sysplex(R) clustering technology.

ESP Sysplex is an enhanced performance option for its Enterprise Systems Platform (ESP) workload management solution, which maximizes throughput and optimizes availability. The added value of ESP Sysplex comes from seamless integration with IBM's S/390 Parallel Sysplex clustering technology for OS/390(R) operating system environments. In recognition of the extent of this integration, IBM has granted ESP Sysplex its Advanced Cluster Proven(R) mark, the only product of its type to have received this designation.

"The availability of Cybermation's ESP Sysplex demonstrates how working with IBM can lead to a valuable systems management tool for enabling and exploiting the OS/390 benefits in Parallel Sysplex environments," said Peter McCaffrey of IBM's Enterprise Server Market Development Group. "OS/390 provides our customers with measurable price-performance benefits, and ESP Sysplex helps to drive the return on investment even higher. Cybermation is one of the first ten ISVs to receive the Advanced Cluster Proven designation, and is the only supplier of enterprise scheduling and automation tools to have done so."

ESP Sysplex is designed for enterprises with batch processing on OS/390 system environments. It helps users to exploit the continuous availability capabilities of S/390 Parallel Sysplex clustering and optimizes batch throughput and management. "We are making S/390 Parallel Sysplex technology exploitation easy for our customers. The bigger the commitment to OS/390, the greater the return our customers will get from ESP Sysplex," stated Cybermation's chairman and technology architect, Ray Nissan. "Our close collaboration with the IBM OS/390 operating system development group has enabled us to offer our customers a visible increase in system utilization and enhanced ability to meet service-level commitments. IBM has been extremely open to working with Cybermation to ensure that our mutual customers derive maximum benefit from Parallel Sysplex."

Through exploitation of the cross-system communication facility (XCF) and other inherent S/390 Parallel Sysplex clustering advantages, ESP Sysplex 1.0 provides vital functions. Full command and control is available through universal logon/API routing, regardless of which system server a user is logged onto. Fault tolerance is provided through ESP Sysplex's shadow management, which allows immediate fail-over facilities. The `expedite' feature acts as an accelerator for execution of critical workload when entire applications or individual jobs are running late. It raises priority and allocates more system resources to a job, or group of jobs, in order to better meet service-level commitments. ESP Sysplex has new and advanced resource management capabilities to optimize parallel processing. ESP Sysplex's resource balancing function enables the distribution of workload within the Sysplex The resource aggregation function ensures that the resources required for a group of co-dependent jobs are available before scheduling the jobs for parallel execution. ESP Sysplex also provides effective reporting on the activity of the workload manager function within OS/390, to enhance system performance and resource utilization.

Cybermation is confident that ESP Sysplex will provide a large and rapid return on investment to its customers who want to exploit S/390 Parallel Sysplex clustering advantages and guarantee maximum throughput and high availability.

About Cybermation

Cybermation Inc. is recognised by its many Fortune 500 customers both as the provider of best-of-breed scheduling and workload management software for distributed computing environments, and for its systems management expertise. Cybermation provides integrated business automation solutions for heterogeneous computing environments, including ESP Workload Manager(R) for enterprise-wide job scheduling and workload management (OS/390(R), UNIX(R), Windows NT(R) and OS/400(R) operating systems as well as for SAP R/3, Oracle and PeopleSoft ERP environments), ESP Workstation for enterprise scheduling from a single point of control, ESP Encore(R) for rerun and restart control, ESP Console Manager(R) for console automation, ESP Communication Server(R) for local to remote ESP communications, and DJC(R) for real-time resource control. Cybermation's customers include Hudson's Bay Company, Statistics Canada, and CN Rail in Canada, and Allstate Insurance, Nike, Deere & Co. and GTE Data Services.