Oxford Health Plans chooses Tivoli Software for networked computing management.

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 11, 1996--

TME 10 Chosen after Extensive Evaluation

Tivoli Systems Inc., today announced that Oxford Health Plans of Norwalk, CT., has chosen TME 10 (Tivoli Management Environment) software as the systems management solution for its heterogeneous enterprise-wide network. The sale, valued at $3 million over the next two years, includes several TME 10 applications, developer tool kits and support services. Oxford Health Plans is one of the fastest growing managed care companies in the United States, with more than 1.5 million members. TME 10 will be used to manage a network of more than 500 UNIX and Windows NT servers with 5,000 connected Windows 95, Macintosh and NCD Xterm users. The network spans Oxford's Trumbull, CT. data center, regional data centers, corporate headquarters and local business offices in five states, and incorporates centralized data center, online transaction processing (OLTP), and client/server computing environments. TME 10 will give Oxford's UNIX-trained systems management staff a consistent, highly automated and proactive way to manage across heterogeneous systems.

Oxford chose TME 10 after an extensive evaluation of TME 10 and other similar products. Key factors in TME 10's selection were the quality of its applications for software distribution, remote monitoring and user administration; its ability to scale to handle very large environments; and its open architecture. The openness of the TME 10 architecture will allow Oxford to easily integrate its help desk, operations management and other "best-of-breed" management tools intoTME 10 for integrated management.

"TME 10 is an important part of our IT strategy because it enables us to manage an increasing number of systems without having to add additional staff. TME 10 also allows us to manage proactively instead of reactively. We couldn't do either with our previous management tools," said Peter Hood, Oxford's director of information services planning. "With Oxford's rapid membership growth, we're continually adding new servers to keep up with the data-handling needs of the business. In the past, adding a server almost always meant adding a systems administrator. Not with TME 10. We now have an architecture that automates much of the tedious work in managing our complex environment and can scale as our network expands and our business grows."

"We're excited to be working with Oxford Health Plans and its IT team to manage their networked enterprise," said Frank Moss, Tivoli's president and CEO. "Oxford's transaction-intensive, rapidly growing environment is the classic candidate for TME 10 -- a million moving parts that need to be synchronized, managed and controlled. TME 10 will give Oxford a common way to manage across the different kinds of computing environments that make up its enterprise."

Oxford's TME 10 suite of applications includes TME 10 Distributed Monitoring, TME 10 Software Distribution and TME 10 User Management. Oxford is using TME 10 Distributed Monitoring to proactively monitor boot, applications and OLTP servers in its data centers, automatically tracking the system environment, disk space, memory, status and other functions. Alerts and alarms generated in response to predefined thresholds are fed back to help desk staff through the TME 10 Enterprise Console. Automated responses can be put in place to fix routine problems, so that only serious problems need to be escalated to senior administrative staff.

"TME 10 Distributed Monitoring gives us the biggest bang for the buck because it keeps our production environment running smoothly," said Jim Ginnetty, manager in charge of the TME implementation. "We're already seeing huge turnaround time gains in resolving problems using Tivoli software. We can now catch things when they're going bad, before they become critical. We can fix things before our users know anything's wrong. With an environment of our size and complexity, the ability to correlate and filter events from different systems and system components through the Enterprise Console is particularly important."

TME 10 Software Distribution will enable Oxford to do automated distribution of software to servers and desktops, as well as maintain consistent configuration and inventory of key software on systems across the enterprise. Previously, IT staff used to do software updates manually, which was very labor intensive. TME 10 Software Distribution will play a key role in the company's roll-out of Windows PCs as the desktop standard, replacing Macintosh personal computers, and in upgrading all PCs to Windows 95. Oxford plans to take advantage of Tivoli's Applications Management Specification (AMS), to instrument its new applications to make them immediately manageable by TME 10. Longer-term, developers are looking at integrating access and control into applications using AMS, to provide consistent and controlled access to applications across the enterprise through TME 10.

Once the enterprise-wide roll-out of TME 10 is complete in 1997, local system administrators in the 14 regional offices will be able to manage their local client/server environments using TME 10's standard management interface and consistent set of tools. Because TME 10 supports policy-based administration, central IT staff can establish best-practices policies with TME 10 templates for local implementation. TME 10 Enterprise Console will provide local administrators with a central management desktop for tracking, correlating and responding to local events and alarms, thereby enabling more proactive management.

Oxford Health Plans Inc.

Founded in 1984, Oxford Health Plans Inc. is one of the fastest growing managed care companies in the United States. With more than 1.5 million members, the company offers a portfolio of high-quality products to consumers and businesses in Connecticut, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and Southeastern Pennsylvania. Oxford's health plans were rated number one in overall satisfaction in three independent consumer surveys. The company is headquartered in Norwalk, CT., and has projected revenues of $3 billion for 1996. For more information about Oxford Health Plans, visit the company's World Wide Web site at http://www.oxhp.com

Tivoli Systems Inc.

Tivoli Systems Inc., an IBM company, provides highly scalable, open and cross platform solutions for network computing environments that extend from the mainframe to the laptop. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Tivoli distributes its products worldwide through a network of domestic and international sales offices, systems integrators, resellers and IBM sales channels. For more information about Tivoli Systems, and its products, visit the company's World Wide Web site at http://www,tivoli.com

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Tivoli Management Environment and TME 10 are trademarks of Tivoli Systems, an IBM company. All other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.

CONTACT: Tivoli Systems Inc.

Claire Campbell

512-436-8311

[e-mail]

OR

Peter Hood

Oxford Health Plans

[phone]

[e-mail]

OR

David Seuss

Lois Paul and Partners

617-238-5771

[e-mail]