DDR ANNOUNCES AVAILABILITY OF ACE/Internet FOR INTERNET AND INTRANET SERVER MANAGEMENT

INDUSTRY LEADER IN ACP/TPF SYSTEMS AUTOMATION NOW AVAILABLE FOR NON-AGENT BASED MONITORING AND AUTOMATION OF INTERNET SERVERS.

NOVATO, CA (June 15, 1996) -- Diversified Data Resources (DDR) today announced the availability of ACE/Internet. ACE/Internet provides automated monitoring and remote management of UNIX-based Internet servers from a central, secure location. ACE/Internet is based upon DDR's Automated Console Expert (ACE), which is the industry leading automation product for ACP/TPF systems. ACE is widely used on mission-critical ACP/TPF systems, by Fortune 500 companies in the airline, hotel and financial service industries. ACE also supports MVS, VM, VSE, OS/400 and many other operating systems. ACE/Internet for UNIX systems is the latest member of the proven ACE family of automation products.

Prodigy Inc. of New York, is playing a major role in the continued development of ACE/Internet. "With over 100 Internet servers of all types in operation, maintaining 100% continuous availability is a must," said Jim Rickard, Director of Operations at Prodigy Inc. "Before we implemented ACE/Internet we faced major difficulties in monitoring the health of our server farm. It was almost impossible to monitor everything that was going on, and we continued to grow at a tremendous rate. We needed a simple and yet powerful solution that would enable us to monitor our information, mail and FTP servers from one location. We did not want to program our way to a solution and we needed something in production now, not next year. Since we already use ACE for MVS, VM and TPF, it was logical to look at ACE/Internet for automating our Internet servers. Only ACE/Internet met our demanding needs. We were in production within 2 to 3 days. Today ACE/Internet is successfully monitoring all 60 of our Web servers, a number that will grow to a few hundred within the next year. The ACE/Internet workstation monitors every message on every UNIX server; and still has plenty of horse-power to regularly check that every home page we host is up and available to the Internet at large."

ACE/Internet can monitor and control hundreds of Internet or Intranet servers from a single workstation. ACE/Internet can monitor a server passively, actively or both together. Passive monitoring is performed by monitoring the output from a server. Active monitoring is performed over permanent or dynamically acquired Telnet sessions. All server output is monitored by the ACE/Internet automation engine for the presence of predefined "target" messages or conditions. When a target is detected, ACE/Internet initiates a predefined automation procedure that can perform a wide range of actions in response to the target condition.

The heart of the ACE/Internet automation engine is the same high performance automation database that is included with the ACE automation product. Using a GUI interface to the database, users can easily define automation targets and their corresponding actions. When a targeted message is detected, ACE/Internet will automatically perform the actions predefined on the database. The most common database action is to start an ACE automation procedure, which can respond to and interact with the server. A procedure can automatically respond to messages, issue commands to correct error conditions, collect diagnostic information, or any other task that an operator might perform.

Automation procedures are written in either REXX, C or XPROCs (ACE's integrated, automation language). They can be as small as a one line reply to a target message, or large enough to perform complex command-response interactions between multiple UNIX servers. Procedures can actively monitor server resources such as, CPU, DASD and cache utilization, error and deferred queue's, and application status. When resource utilization levels exceed defined thresholds, actions can be taken automatically to correct the problem and/or notify an operator. ACE/Internet can alert operators by audio alerts using a PC sound card, by console messages or by paging. With ACE/Internet automation, Internet server problems can be detected and corrected without operator intervention.

"Industry analysts and customers agree, today's administrators demand visibility and operational control of the enterprise Internet servers. Traditionally, the only solution options have been proprietary, standards and agent-based solutions. On closer inspection these are complex, lengthy to implement, and often cost-prohibitive", said George Faucher, Vice-President of Marketing at DDR. "In contrast, no complex agent deployment is necessary with ACE/Internet. ACE/Internet can be up and running immediately and inexpensively, as opposed to other possible solutions that require expensive hardware and agent deployment on all servers to be monitored," George Faucher concluded.

ACE/Internet is an OS/2 application that runs on any Pentium class workstation. ACE/Internet is a complete software solution; no special boards, cables, or agent software are required. ACE/Internet is scaleable; it can be configured to support from 1 to 1,000 servers. ACE/Internet provides comprehensive security for user-logon and individual command entries. ACE/Internet also provides a handy simulator facility to allow off-line development and testing of automation procedures.

ACE/Internet can be used with the ACE Automated Console Expert system to create a fully integrated Enterprise Automation solution that supports the automated interoperation of UNIX, MVS, VM, TPF, DEC, OS/400, Tandem and many other host consoles. ACE/Internet can also generate SNMP alerts to inter-operate with leading enterprise systems management software including HP/OpenView™, CA-Unicenter™, and IBM's SystemView for AIX™.

ACE/Internet pricing starts at $9,900 and is based upon installation size and configuration. Purchase options include permanent license, rental or lease.

Privately owned, Diversified Data Resources, Inc., has provided enterprise management systems for the MVS, VM, VSE, UNIX and ACP/TPF environment for more than 12 years. DDR was founded in 1981 and is headquartered in Novato, CA.

Contact: George Faucher, Vice President
Diversified Data Resources
7200 Redwood Blvd., Suite 222
Novato, California, 94945-3257
Toll free: (800) 233-DDRI (3374)
Sales Office: (415) 898-8282
Facsimile: (415) 898-7331
Web Site: http://www.ddri.com