Sequent Delivers $2.4 Million Solution to Large U.S. Nuclear Facility; Texas Power Plant Chooses Clustered Client Server Systems to Gain Flexibility For Re-Engineering.BEAVERTON, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 25, 1995--Sequent Computer Systems, Inc., has been selected to provide open systems for mission-critical maintenance and support functions at one of the largest nuclear facilities in the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. . The $2.4 million Sequent(r) solution purchased by the South Texas Project Electric Generating Station (STPEGS STPEGS South Texas Project Electric Generating Station ) includes clustered Sequent systems, software and professional services (job) professional services - A department of a supplier providing consultancy and programming manpower for the supplier's products. . With this move, STPEGS is pursuing its strategic direction to replace mainframe systems with an open, client/server solution that provides both high availability Also called "RAS" (reliability, availability, serviceability) or "fault resilient," it refers to a multiprocessing system that can quickly recover from a failure. There may be a minute or two of downtime while one system switches over to another, but processing will continue. and the flexibility to respond quickly to changing business conditions. The high availability of Sequent systems was a key consideration in the STPEGS selection. With Sequent, STPEGS will be able to support mission-critical functions and perform system maintenance without incurring downtime. "Sequent impressed us with its technical depth and its total commitment to our success," said Tom Koenig, assistant to the manager of nuclear information systems at STPEGS. "And because we are running mission-critical applications on Oracle7 with the Oracle Parallel Server A version of the Oracle database system designed for massively parallel processors (MPPs). It allows multiple CPUs to access a single database. (database) Oracle Parallel Server , we value Sequent's experience in high-performance parallel technology." The Sequent solution will contribute to the efficient operation of the STPEGS facility by providing online transaction processing See transaction processing and OLCP. , general database management and decision support. Sequent systems will run custom applications that manage maintenance, logistics and planning for the electric power facility, which is jointly owned by Central Power and Light, the City of Austin, the City of San Antonio San Antonio (săn ăntō`nēō, əntōn`), city (1990 pop. 935,933), seat of Bexar co., S central Tex., at the source of the San Antonio River; inc. 1837. , and Houston Lighting & Power Company. Sequent systems will also support applications for public and employee safeguards, such as the monitoring of workers' radiation badges. "This project underscores Sequent's leadership in large-scale open systems environments," said Mark Miller, vice president of worldwide field marketing at Sequent. "Customers like STPEGS, with mission-critical needs, turn to Sequent not only for the high system availability they require now but also for the capacity for growth and change in the future." STPEGS is looking to achieve several objectives. Strategically, the facility is seeking to counter increasing competitive pressure in the power-supply industry; it is also positioning itself for a quick and efficient response when industry deregulation Deregulation The reduction or elimination of government power in a particular industry, usually enacted to create more competition within the industry. Notes: Traditional areas that have been deregulated are the telephone and airline industries. occurs. STPEGS aims to build a foundation with the flexibility to support business process re-engineering See reengineering. (business) Business Process Re-engineering - (BPR) Any radical change in the way in which an organisation performs its business activities. BPR involves a fundamental re-think of the business processes followed by a redesign of business activities to and ongoing changes in business conditions. It requires a system with the scalability to expand in size and capacity as it grows. Finally, STPEGS aims to unify its disparate databases to take better advantage of the information contained therein. The client/server solution consists of two clusters of Sequent systems. The first cluster of two Symmetry(r) 5000 SE20 systems, with four processors, 512 MB of memory and 32 GB of shared disk storage, will be used for application development, quality assurance and training. The second cluster of two Symmetry 5000 SE60 systems, with 20 processors, 3 GB of memory and 200 GB of shared disk storage, will be used as the production system. System software for the solution includes Sequent ptx/CLUSTERS, ptx/SVM, ptx/BACKUP, ProScan, and Performance Evaluation Performance evaluation The assessment of a manager's results, which involves, first, determining whether the money manager added value by outperforming the established benchmark (performance measurement) and, second, determining how the money manager achieved the calculated return Package (PEP). In addition, Sequent is providing links to the other STPEGS systems to permit data exchange, as well as remote links to the corporate mainframe. The Sequent systems will run Oracle7 Release 7.1 with the Oracle Parallel Server (OPS Ops (ŏps), in Roman religion, goddess of harvests. She was the wife of Saturn, by whom she bore Jupiter and Juno. At her festivals, the Opiconsivia and the Opalia, held in August and December, respectively, she was worshiped as a goddess of sowing ) option, which was jointly developed by Sequent and Oracle Corp. STPEGS is using Oracle CASE to rewrite its mainframe applications for the open systems environment. With the Oracle applications on Sequent open systems, STPEGS is positioning itself to easily add functionality to existing applications and to quickly develop new applications as requirements change. The installation of the Sequent systems is being followed by a period of application development, with the new applications scheduled for full production rollout before the end of this year. Sequent Computer Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:SQNT SQNT Sequent Computer Systems (stock symbol) ), based in Beaverton, Ore., is a leading architect and provider of open client/server systems for commercial computer applications in online transaction processing, decision support and messaging. Sequent provides professional consulting and educational services to ensure successful system solutions. The company develops and markets scalable computing systems that support enterprisewide applications and information services See Information Systems. : the Symmetry series running on the UNIX UNIX Operating system for digital computers, developed by Ken Thompson of Bell Laboratories in 1969. It was initially designed for a single user (the name was a pun on the earlier operating system Multics). (r) operating system, and the WinServer(r) family running on the Microsoft(r) Windows NT operating system. Since the launch of its symmetric multiprocessor family of systems in 1984, Sequent has installed more than 6,000 large-scale systems worldwide. -0- Sequent, Symmetry and WinServer are registered trademarks and ptx/CLUSTERS, ptx/SVM, ptx/BACKUP and PEP are trademarks of Sequent Computer Systems, Inc. Oracle is a registered trademark and Oracle7, Oracle Parallel Server and Oracle CASE are trademarks of Oracle Corp. UNIX is a registered trademark in the United States and other countries, licensed exclusively through X/Open Company Limited. Microsoft is a registered trademark and Windows NT is a trademark of Microsoft Corp. CONTACT: Sequent Computer Systems, Inc. Mike Green or Helen Connor, 503/626-5700 or Waggener Edstrom Wendy Hughson or Doug Duffield, 503/245-0905 |
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