Isuzu Motors America Drives End-To-End Enterprise Management with CA'S Unicenter TNG.

ISLANDIA, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 15, 1997--

Superior Technical Capabilities, Extensibility, CA Support

Considered Key Factors In Selection Of Unicenter TNG Over

IBM/Tivoli And HP OpenView 

Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) today announced a comprehensive agreement with Isuzu Motors America, Inc. to implement CA's Unicenter TNG as the IT management solution for Isuzu America's diverse corporate technology environment.

The enterprise-wide deployment will initially involve the automation of network management functions, and the implementation of advanced job scheduling, help desk, and single sign-on capabilities across Isuzu's IT infrastructure--a diverse client/server enterprise encompassing IBM AS/400, UNIX and Windows NT servers, and more than 1,100 PCs and workstations.

Isuzu America's decision to standardize on Unicenter TNG follows an extensive analysis of the company's business and technology requirements, as well as a rigorous examination of IT management products from IBM/Tivoli and Hewlett-Packard.

"What really tipped the scales in its favor was CA's willingness to dive in and help our IT department understand the issues and challenges of enterprise management," said Gary Gray, chief information officer of Isuzu America. "CA made a concerted effort to understand how our company operates. We felt we were gaining a long-time strategic partner.

"We considered Tivoli's offerings, but they did not have all the components we were looking for," said Gray. "We also ran HP OpenView, but it did not compare with the scope of Unicenter TNG. CA's solution addressed all our needs."

In 1994, Isuzu transitioned from being a U.S. distributor of Isuzu vehicles to a fully autonomous business subsidiary of Isuzu Ltd. of Japan. This substantial change to the company's overall business model created radical business and resource management challenges, and served as Isuzu's motivation to move toward enterprise-wide IT management.

The new business entity took on the task of manufacturing the majority of Isuzu products in the U.S., as well as some new engineering responsibilities. In addition, it formed relationships with other automotive companies, such as Honda Motor Co. and General Motors, to collaborate on complex product building exchanges.

"All this new business meant a substantial growth of our IT infrastructure, particularly in the number and types of applications the company had to support," said Gray. "Establishing a comprehensive infrastructure for enterprise systems management is no longer a luxury for us. It's essential."

Gray acknowledged that Isuzu America's Information Technology Resources (ITR) group has been playing catch-up to support the company's new business models ever since the transition. "We moved from a relatively simple mainframe operation running distributor-associated applications, to a variety of nationwide client/server environments," he said. "This shift has resulted in new platforms, new applications, and new databases--all in a very short time frame."

Isuzu's first challenge was to automate the monitoring of its Windows NT servers. "Before Unicenter TNG came on the scene, we often didn't know that a server was down until somebody called to complain," said Gray. "Our network technical people were constantly putting out fires. With Unicenter TNG, we've taken a more proactive approach, and our level of service has improved substantially."

Another area of importance was Isuzu's help desk operation, which had previously used internally-developed software to track and troubleshoot problems. "In the past, we had no good way to maintain archival records of problems and their resolutions," said Gray. "Today, with Unicenter TNG's Advanced Help Desk software in place, we're gathering the historical data we need to hit the ground running as individual problems come along. We don't have to start over from scratch like we used to."

Gray expects that Unicenter TNG's Single Sign-On capability will substantially enhance user productivity. "It's a nuisance for end-users to have to go though elaborate sign-on and sign-off procedures," said Gray. "Having Single Sign-On in place makes the working environment much more convenient and productive. Unicenter TNG will give us one consistent springboard into all of our applications."

Gray also appreciates the advanced scheduling functions of Unicenter TNG, which have taken over Isuzu's rigorously mandated manufacturing processes. "In the past, we had to manually run job scheduling applications," said Gray. "Operators had to initiate each step in the process, manually checking to see if any errors had occurred in prior steps. Unicenter TNG took over the entire process, managing events, logging errors, and initiating every step in its proper sequence."

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 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 10,000 people in 160 offices in 40 countries and had revenue of $4 billion in fiscal year 1997. CA can be reached by visiting http://www.cai.com on the World Wide Web, emailing [e-mail] or calling 1-516-342-5224. -0- All referenced product names are trademarks of their respective companies.

CONTACT: Sean O'Neill

516/342-4130

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