RSPnet.com Makes Strategic Shift to CA's Unicenter TNG for Enterprise Management.

ISLANDIA, N.Y.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 2, 1999--

Systems Integrator Promotes Service Levels And Scalable

Management Solutions To Remotely Enable E-Commerce Initiatives

Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA) today announced that RSPnet.com (RSPN), a premier provider of network and systems integration services for Fortune 500 companies, has selected CA's Unicenter TNG to provide scalable enterprise management to meet the specific requirements of clients as they increasingly embrace Net-enabled E-commerce.

RSPN is counting on Unicenter TNG to do double duty. First, by standardizing on Unicenter TNG, RSPN will put all IT assets in its technology infrastructure under centralized management. Second, by offering Unicenter TNG-enabled management services to its customers, RSPN will deliver on a turnkey basis a new class of highly reliable net-centric services.

"We are using Unicenter TNG as the foundation for a remote enterprise management solution that allows us to deliver a wide variety of highly reliable e-commerce and Web-enabled applications," said Mark Stewart, RSPN senior vice president of products. "We expect the Unicenter TNG applications we deployed in support of RSPN's operations will reduce the total costs of IT ownership."

Unicenter TNG enables RSPN to supply organizations with high-end solutions such as network security, software distribution and virus protection that can be remotely managed and tied to RSPN's round-the clock help desk support. These remote management and monitoring capabilities will also enhance the reliability of commerce-enabled Web sites for RSPN's E-Com Tools customers.

"The remote enterprise management that RSPN can offer through Unicenter TNG will allow our customers to build an e-commerce capability into their network that's productive and reliable 24 hours a day, 365 days a year," said Stewart. "Unicenter TNG is the absolute leading product in the industry for enterprise management."

As a Unicenter TNG reseller, RSPN is creating a business model in which it provides value-added Net-centric products, services, and e-commerce hosting packages enabled by a selected suite of Unicenter TNG services. The Web-enabled applications will be custom wrapped in selected Unicenter TNG functions such as event management or security management for the firewall server.

"Our core competency is our ability to deliver on a turnkey basis all the functionality an enterprise needs to become a full participant in the world of Web-enabled E-commerce," noted Stewart. "Our customers are greatly impacted when their systems are not available They can tell us in dollars and cents what an hour of down time costs them. Unicenter TNG provides the systems reliability and availability that we need to run our business and theirs."

RSPN also offers E-Com Tools, a modular set of Web-enabled services optimized for particular market segments. These turnkey solutions, called E-Blocks, are hosted entirely by RSPN and delivered to customers on a monthly service basis. The management component is based on Unicenter TNG.

RSPN is excited about the enterprise management possibilities of E-Blocks. "For example, we will have unprecedented abilities to reassure our clients who ask for reliability and system availability," said Randal York, product specialist at RSPN. "Our response will be to give the clients a Unicenter TNG console, offering the same views our analysts use."

From a performance guarantee standpoint, RSPN can set the console up so that if there is a serious network event, alarms can go off at both RSPN and the client site. "This help gives our client increased assurance that we are on top of the services that our service level agreements call for," said York.

Allowing IT To Be More Proactive

All of RSPN's mission-critical applications run on a distributed system controlled from the company's data center in Minneapolis, MN. RSPN uses Windows NT and UNIX-based systems to host the company's custom Web applications and Oracle databases.

RSPN is deploying Unicenter TNG to manage the company's backoffice IT operations. Services such as event management and single sign-on allow IT managers to be more proactive. Creating central consoles from which network events across the enterprise can be managed lets analysts anticipate many events before they occur. Unicenter TNG's Business Process Views gives knowledge workers an intuitive, graphical understanding of the specific impacts a potential outage would create. This information allows RSPN to prioritize its response.

Automation of its back office operations allows RSPN to manage a rapidly-growing network with a stable number of technicians. "The benefits of implementing Unicenter TNG are easy to see," said York. "Managing a client/server environment often means adding more and more systems support personnel. We have reversed this trend by automating many of the manual support tasks through Unicenter TNG."

As a technology company, RSPN was well equipped to conduct a full evaluation of a number of systems and network management alternatives, including IBM's Tivoli/TME and NetView and Hewlett-Packard's OpenView. "We selected Unicenter TNG because it allows us to pull together from a network and systems management standpoint the most comprehensive and integrated set of functionality possible," said Stewart. "Given our mandate to deploy highly distributed and scalable network management solutions, we concluded that Unicenter TNG's distributed architecture was optimally suited for the task."

CA Global Professional Services is assisting in the implementation of Unicenter TNG.

RSPNet, a VirtualFund.com enterprise, represents a national network of regional service providers and channel partners dedicated to providing Net-Centric Hosting, Tools and Services for complete Internet solutions. Since 1955, RSPN has been providing system integration services to over 250 customers under long-term contracts, including numerous Fortune 500 companies, across the United States. RSPN has reseller relationships with over 40 well-known hardware/software suppliers and has a staff that is well-versed in technologies such as TCP/IP, UNIX and NT operating systems to enable them to bring the right technology to each situation. For more information about RSPN, visit their web site at www.rspnet.com.

Computer Associates International, Inc. (NYSE: CA), the world leader in mission-critical business computing, provides software, support and integration services in more than 100 countries around the world. CA has more than 13,000 employees and had revenue of $5.1 billion in calendar year 1998.

For more information about CA, please call 516-342-5224 or email [e-mail]. CA's World Wide Web address is www.cai.com.

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