Product Backgrounder: BullSoft OpenMaster Release 5.1, AccessMaster.

Billerica, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 24, 1999--

New Application Governor and Configuration Governor features of OpenMaster 5.1 secure enterprise management. BullSoft's award-winning security products, integrated and expanded under AccessMaster, secure

enterprise management.

Bull designed and built OpenMaster(R) using a standards-based, object-oriented architecture for the secure management of multi-vendor environments. Since the product's release in 1992 and the addition of the AccessMaster security management domain in 1997, OpenMaster has been updated and enhanced continuously to provide an open integration framework and growing suite of management and security applications, smoothly integrating new technologies while preserving customer investments over time.

BullSoft, the worldwide software division of Bull, was created in early 1998 to assume full R&D, sales and marketing activities for OpenMaster, AccessMaster and other innovative products such as the SecurWare(R) Internet security software suite. BullSoft's announcements on May 24, 1999 focus the OpenMaster suite on secure enterprise management and expand the scope of AccessMaster to include Internet security tools.

The two suites remain highly complementary and tightly integrated, sharing a common data repository, core services and user interface. The two suites provide a modular, scalable, and totally complementary approach to managing and securing the entire enterprise IT network, system, and application infrastructure so that enterprises can focus on resolving their priority business related issues as they develop and deploy a global management and security policy enabling them to participate fully in the Internet economy.

OpenMaster Release 5.1 manages the underlying IT infrastructure so users can adapt with speed, control and flexibility in order to maintain the desired levels of service necessary to meet their business objectives in today's complex open and networked world. Similarly, AccessMaster provides a global, end-to-end security management policy and modular products that secure and streamline user access, speed communications and protect IT resources as the enterprise embraces the Internet.

When users implement OpenMaster and AccessMaster together, they have a fully integrated, all-encompassing enterprise security and service level management policy that covers all business processes -- enterprise and Internet based -- and all users, both internal and external to the enterprise. This integrated approach ensures that only authorized users have access to IT resources and applications over any public or private network connection they wish, including the Internet, regardless of their physical location.

OpenMaster is the most highly integrated and customer-proven secure network, system, and telecommunications enterprise management solution in the world. More than 29,000 OpenMaster licenses are in use at more than 1,500 customer sites worldwide - more than the production installed base of comparable products from all other vendors combined.

As an enterprise and Internet security solution, AccessMaster provides centralized, policy-based user administration across applications and systems, including single sign-on, encryption and security services for distributed applications, firewall and VPN tools for control over remote users, and public key infrastructure (PKI) to secure applications. AccessMaster components share common security management services with OpenMaster, and both AccessMaster and OpenMaster user a common central repository of secure user information for security policy management. AccessMaster has the field-proven capability to apply a security policy to tens of thousands of users.

New OpenMaster Release 5.1 Capabilities

New Application Governor and Configuration Governor features build on existing OpenMaster capabilities to help user organizations better secure and manage the complexity of their critical business processes while also providing an automated, secure approach to configuration management to achieve desired service levels.

--Application Governor - is a secure solution designed to manage enterprise business processes and ensure optimum application availability and performance. Unlike conventional network and system management products that only show the status of the specific components of an underlying IT infrastructure, Application Governor provides an application-centric view of business processes. This logical view of IT resources is directed towards managing the contribution of deployed applications (and their supporting infrastructures, system, peripheral, database, network) towards specific business processes, enables users to proactively monitor the performance and availability of designated applications - not just the status of a given server, router or PC.

Application Governor uses a Web-based Java Beans interface for ease of use and maximum scalability. It is open and adaptable, and includes helpful templates that promote ease of customization for use with functional packages, such as:

-- ERP applications, such as SAP R/3 (Baan is scheduled)

-- Databases, such as Oracle, and Sybase (Microsoft SQL Server and Informix are scheduled)

-- Support for middleware, such as BEA Tuxedo and Lotus Notes is scheduled

-- Operating systems, such as UNIX and Windows NT.

Application Governor works from profile definitions of targeted applications, and provides functions in multiple management disciplines, including monitoring, expertise, administration, etc., corresponding to a user's specific role.

--Configuration Governor - provides allows reference configurations to be defined and managed integrated with inventory, software distribution and asset management. The software goes beyond software deployment to offer desired state management. Configuration Governor is the most secure and complete solution to deploying software on PCs and servers to facilitate IT change and lower total cost of ownership.

Reference configurations define the ideal state of the IT requirements, and can be specified for multiple domains within an organizations as well as for specific applications. The software automatically looks for configuration mismatches, prepares a user-defined upgrade action and then executes the action I order to maintain service level quality.

In addition, Configuration Governor includes automatic discovery of system and network elements, further ensuring consistency of all managed devices and automating what has been a manual task. This process automatically interfaces with the asset management database, thereby saving additional time as new systems are added.

Expanded AccessMaster Capabilities

With OpenMaster Release 5.1, the AccessMaster offer combines the NetWall firewall and VPN previously offered under BullSoft's SecurWare(R) Internet security product suite with existing AccessMaster policy management, user administration and single sign-on features. New capabilities include PKI and remote access user management.

The key benefit to users lies in the high degree of integration among the modules, which provides a single security management capability to enforce enterprise-wide security policy based on a comprehensive, role-based management model. This global security management policy, which is particularly well suited to conducting business in today's Internet era, can be used for:

-- Internal user access to all IT resources

-- Mobile users and business partners accessing the enterprise network resources

-- Managing users' digital certificates and PKI.

AccessMaster is now available in six modules, which combine enterprise security and management for optimum IT service levels at the lowest cost. AccessMaster provides ultimate dependability and proven scalability to meet the needs of the largest corporations and most complex deployments. It also delivers rapid time to value, thanks to its modular, scalable and tightly integrated components.

-- AccessMaster Security Policy - helps an organization to deploy and manage an integrated, enterprise-wide security policy that reduces security risks while reducing the cost of ownership. The enterprise security policy encompasses, in a rules-based manner, the key critical assets within the organization. Profiles are created for each type of user by job function, based on a corporate information security policy, and stored in a global security information database. This database performs centralized management for all authorized users and administrators to establish access privileges for all employees and third-party users.

-- AccessMaster Single Sign-On -- secures and centrally manages user access to authorized IT resources while increasing user satisfaction and productivity and decreasing help desk costs. The need for single-point security administration, combined with the full service of single sign-on, is growing exponentially in all markets, as a result of an ever changing corporate computing landscape, including the growth of Internet computing.

-- AccessMaster Application Security - offers a standards-based PKI facility, which includes full certificate management capability, as the most complete and flexible way to secure enterprise applications. AccessMaster PKI includes both certificate authority and registration authority, and implements the PKIX standard of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as well as the X.509 V3 standard recognized by the International Standards Organization (ISO). Because it is standards-based, AccessMaster's PKI can work with and manage other certification authorities. BullSoft is the first enterprise security management vendor to provide its own certification authority. AccessMaster also supports the IETF's GSS-API and Microsoft's SSPI for Microsoft Applications.

-- AccessMaster Remote -- provides secure remote communications allowing organizations to keep in touch with a mobile workforce and exchange information securely with partners and customers in extranet environments. Supporting RADIUS standards, AccessMaster Remote offers the industry's first solution that can efficiently secure and manage -- under a single enterprise security management policy -- internal as well as mobile users third-party extranet users. Directed at large enterprises with tens of thousands of end users, this solution enables organizations to effectively share and easily deliver mission-critical information over the Internet to their business partners, suppliers, consultants, customers and employees.

-- AccessMaster NetWall -- BullSoft's uniquely dependable and manageable strong Internet protection solution helps an enterprise secure its various Intranets and extranets while opening them up to the Internet. The ultimate dependable firewall, NetWall is an advanced software firewall that allows organizations to securely open up to the world and build Intranets and Extranets while protecting against attacks and intrusions. Featuring high-end multi-level control, NetWall is the first firewall to ensure ultimate 24x7 dependability and low cost of ownership with graphical centralized management of all filtering devices, including routers. Marketed by BullSoft worldwide, NetWall also is the only firewall product offered by Netscape Communications Corp.

-- AccessMaster VPN -- a hardware-based, high-performance, strong encryption and compression capability providing highly cost-effective and secure site-to-site communications. The strongest encryption solution for building Virtual Private Networks, AccessMaster VPN is a powerful hardware- and software-based encryption solution with a fully trusted FIPS 140-1 design that allow sites or individual users to communicate securely over any private or public IP network. Providing high-speed strong encryption (triple DES with keys up to 192 bits, exportable worldwide) with compression, AccessMaster VPN allows customers to reduce their communications costs by compressing data flows and using cost-effective public networks while ensuring totally secure remote access and full data confidentiality.

Object-based Architecture: the Key to Integration

OpenMaster achieves its high level of integration through an open, object-based architecture in which all networked resources are defined as objects, making it easy to integrate views of different components into a single, consistent view and support new objects and protocols.

Object technology allows applications to share information, thereby reducing costs and manual intervention for administrators by allowing them to focus on management tasks for increased productivity.

OpenMaster technology allows management applications to seamlessly view and access CORBA-based and Java-based resources in addition to the traditionally managed resources (SNMP, CMIP, or proprietary). The robustness of OpenMaster's underlying architecture is demonstrated by the fact that the API for OpenMaster, developed by Bull, became an X/Open standard.

In addition, the OpenMaster architecture is designed for the multi-protocol environments found in today's corporate information systems, allowing comprehensive views of widely different systems through integrated management applications. OpenMaster agent integrators provide dynamic protocol conversion, and allow the various integrated OpenMaster applications to be transparent to the different management protocols, such as TCP/IP, SNA, OSI and other network protocols.

Shared services and a shared database ensure that all management applications benefit equally from information collected and stored through OpenMaster. The distributed nature of the OpenMaster architecture scales to support everything from single sites to large-scale, multi-vendor global enterprise systems comprising several millions of managed objects.

Management From Anywhere

Large distributed environments not only require scalable solutions but also mobile administration. IT staff cannot afford to be tied to a single console, they need to monitor and troubleshoot problems regardless of location. OpenMaster turns any Java-enabled desktop or browser into an enterprise management console, allowing maximum mobility while lowering costs with fewer specialized management consoles required.

These enhancements, based on Java Beans technology, not only provide access to OpenMaster management applications from Web browsers, but also allows OpenMaster customers to build a customized management environment. Specialists only view information relevant to their work, and senior managers can customize interfaces for more junior staff, thereby delegating tasks. BullSoft serves on the JMX (Java Management Extension) Expert Group to ensure that Java-based management applications can easily be integrated into the OpenMaster solution and made immediately available to users with different hardware platforms, thereby reducing development costs.

Experienced Service and Support Organizations

One of the main reasons large management platform projects fail is lack of experienced staff to aid users in implementing and customizing the product. BullSoft and its OpenMaster partners have extensive experience gained by successfully deploying enterprise management solutions for 1,500 worldwide OpenMaster customers.

BullSoft has its own professional services group to deploy the OpenMaster and AccessMaster products. This organization offers systems integration consultants, programmers, product/application trainers lead by experienced program managers who can assess, plan and implement complex systems integration solutions.

The OpenMaster Professional Services approach, based on a proven and ISO 9000 certified methodology, helps large organizations quickly realize a significant return on their investment in the OpenMaster solution. In North America and throughout the world, BullSoft works with major system integration partners such as Marben, Cap Gemini, Audilog and SEMA Group to successfully deploy large OpenMaster solutions. In addition, BullSoft technical customer support provides 24x7x365 response.

About BullSoft

BullSoft, the worldwide software division of Bull, is a leading vendor of secure enterprise and telecommunications management software (OpenMaster), and enterprise and Internet security management software (AccessMaster). Based in Billerica, Mass., BullSoft has research and development, sales, marketing and service operations in the U.S., Europe and Asia. For more information on BullSoft and its products, please visit http://www.bullsoft.com or call toll-free at 800/285-5727.

About Bull

Present in more than 100 countries with more than 21,000 employees and combined revenues of $4.3 billion in 1998, of which 65% is outside France, its country of origin, Bull offers a comprehensive range of systems, infrastructure software and IT services through focused innovation, alliances with the best partners and its own integration expertise. Bull's worldwide software division, BullSoft, and its North/South American operations, are headquartered in Billerica, Mass. The company's web addresses are http://www.bull.com and for the United States, www.us.bull.com.

OpenMaster, AccessMaster and SecurWare are registered trademarks or trademarks of Bull S.A. in the U.S. and other countries. All trademarks, service marks and company names are the property of their respective owners.