SHORT TAKES

DASSAULT SYSTEMES TO ACQUIRE SPATIAL’S ACIS BUSINESS

Suresnes, FRANCE — Dassault Systemes S.A. announced the signing of an agreement whereby Dassault Systemes plans to acquire the 3D software components business of Spatial for $21.5 million in cash. The 3D software component business of Spatial will become part of a new wholly owned subsidiary of Dassault Systemes, which will retain the Spatial name. Michael Payne, current Chief Technical Officer of Dassault Systemes, will become the CEO of this new subsidiary, and Dick Sowar, Chairman and CTO of Spatial, will continue in his leadership role in the new company. Spatial will represent the foundation of Dassault Systemes’ new Technology Company. It will leverage both the current expertise of Spatial in 3D components for solid modeling with its flagship ACIS 3D geometrical modeler, visualization, and interoperability with its 3D data translation and healing tools and services, and the technological excellence of the Dassault Systemes group in 3D technologies.

As part of Dassault Systemes, Spatial becomes unique on the market by offering best-of-breed 3D components addressing the exponential requirements of 3D in Internet-based e-commerce and Business-to-Business (B2B) applications. Bringing these technologies as components to the market will accelerate the overall creation of value added services and will contribute to Industry standardization, which are significant values to the end-users. Spatial will serve major software companies, such as Autodesk, and major industries seeking to develop new Internet applications and services. The portions of the current Spatial company that are not in the 3D software components business will assume the company name PlanetCAD, Inc. PlanetCAD, Inc. will continue to execute its Internet strategy, focused on its PlanetCAD.com Web portal targeted at manufacturing and design engineers. Dassault Systemes will be a strategic provider of 3D software components for PlanetCAD, which will provide Web services and technologies to the extended Dassault Systemes enterprise. “We share with Dassault Systemes a common passion for technology innovation, engineering excellence and a dedication to supporting customers. But more importantly, we were looking for a partner that was as committed as we are to the continuing success of our customers and to our highly skilled employees,” said Bruce Morgan, Spatial President and CEO. “We believe Dassault Systemes is clearly the right candidate to take over our component activity and grow the business with their 3D technologies, which are recognized worldwide for sophistication and market leadership, and their outstanding track record in building relationships with customers, partners and employees.” Information about Spatial is available at http://www.spatial.com . Information about Dassault Systemes is available at http://www.dsweb.com .

COMPAQ, IBM FORM STORAGE NETWORK PACT

San Diego, CA — Compaq Computer Corp. and IBM Corp. said they agreed to create interoperable data storage network products and are working to develop industry standards in a project whose value could exceed $1 billion. Compaq and IBM said in a joint statement they will work to ensure their storage products work together in hopes of building customer acceptance of open storage networking products. They said they will also sell significant products from each other’s storage portfolios. The deal was seen as a way for both companies to go head-to-head with data storage equipment leader EMC Corp. Each company plans to provide equipment, software and staffing to support each other’s open storage networking customer centers.

They said they will share their knowledge with the industry to help create standards for open storage networking such as storage area networks (SAN), and making storage networks more flexible and easier to deploy and manage. The growth of e-business and the increase in demand for “anytime-anywhere” products and services has heightened the need for storage products, the companies said. IDC Consulting projects that worldwide revenue for disk storage systems and storage management software will total $53 billion by 2003. Shares of Compaq rose 1/8 to 25-1/16 and shares of IBM were off 7/8 at 103-1/8 in early trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

UNISYS AND COMPAQ TO DELIVER SERVERS

Blue Bell, PA. — Unisys Corporation announced the signing of an agreement with Compaq Computer Corporation under which Compaq will deliver 32-processor servers based on the powerful and scalable Unisys Cellular MultiProcessing (CMP) architecture under the Compaq ProLiant brand. The two companies had announced the signing of a letter of intent to pursue the agreement in February 2000. The agreement is a significant step forward in driving servers based on industry-standard technology into the highest levels of the data center. “With Compaq and Unisys both delivering CMP-based servers, this groundbreaking Unisys architecture is positioned to be a leader in the market for high-end, mission-critical computing based on industry-standard technology,” said George Gazerwitz, president, Unisys Systems & Technology. “This alliance will extend the benefits of lower cost and reduced complexity in enterprise-class solutions to a broad range of customers.”

“Extending the ProLiant product family to include 32 processor systems is a key element of the Compaq strategy to drive industry-standard technology into the data center,” said Paul Santeler, vice president Enterprise Servers, Industry-Standard Server Group, Compaq. “The CMP architecture will play a key role in fulfilling our commitment to providing the highest levels of performance and stability on platforms based on industry-standard technology.” CMP provides an array of computing capabilities well known to users of large-scale computers, but now available using industry-standard technology. Designed for the power of Intel Pentium III Xeon (32-bit) and Itanium (64-bit) processors, the architecture is optimized for the highly scalable Windows 2000 Datacenter Server operating system. Unisys is an electronic business solutions company whose 36,000 employees help customers in 100 countries apply information technology to seize opportunities and overcome challenges of the Internet economy. For more information on the company, access the Unisys home page on the World Wide Web at http://www.unisys.com .

MICROSOFT AND COMPONENTSOURCE COLLABORATE

Atlanta, GA — Microsoft in association with ComponentSource, a large software component community, announced the launch of MSDN Online Component Resources, designed to aid COM-based component authors, software architects and developers wishing to buy or build components and integrate them with existing or new applications and architectures. MSDN Component Resources – http://msdn.microsoft.com/componentresources – also offers a collection of tools, comments, discussion groups, directories and articles devoted entirely to the issues facing developers and architects in COM-based component development. MSDN Online Component Resources component catalogue is linked to the ComponentSource component repository via the ComponentSource SOAP enabled Repository Integration Kit.

Nick Illidge, EMEA Group Manager DNA Business Development, says: “ComponentSource is an important launch partner for MSDN Online Component Resources. We’re happy to be working with ComponentSource in achieving our goal of building and stimulating the growth of the COM-based components market. Microsoft’s collaboration with ComponentSource on MSDN Online Component Resources will help speed up time-to-market for solutions built on the Windows DNA platform.” Sam Patterson, CEO of ComponentSource, adds: “For over half a decade, we have worked to establish the global open market for software components with Industry initiatives designed to harvest and spur the supply of ‘off-the-shelf’ component expertise. As a company of software engineers, we are specialists in this field. We are delighted that Microsoft has chosen us to extend the fruits of our efforts to MSDN developers worldwide.” Released in January this year, the ComponentSource Repository Integration Kit is a corporate service, intended to help seamlessly integrate ComponentSource’s component catalogue with a broad range of developer environments, including corporate intranets, developer tools, and developer related Internet sites, where the sourcing of off-the-shelf components is key for application development. ComponentSource hosts the largest component repository anywhere, with over 2,500 COM components from over 300 expert component authors. Off-the-shelf component expertise is becoming pervasive in application development as organizations look to speed up their application time to market. Visit http://www.componentsource.com for more information.

DIGITAL FACTORY CO. & COMPAQ ANNOUNCE ALLIANCE

Santa Monica, CA — Digital Factory Co., Ltd., Parent Company of Digital Factory USA, and Compaq Computer K.K. (Japan), announced a technical alliance regarding Digital Factory’s Linux Distribution “Kondara MNU/Linux.” Digital Factory and Compaq will jointly develop “Kondara MNU/Linux” to be optimized for the Alpha platform. “Kondara MNU/Linux” will establish its position as a high performance Linux distribution capable of exploiting Alpha’s blazing fast processor performance. Furthermore, by co-developing with Compaq, a high performance and easy-to-use cluster system on “Kondara MNU/Linux,” Digital Factory will be able to provide clustered and scalable computer systems for the hosting market such as ISP’s, ASP’s as well as the High Performance Technical Computing (HPTC) field.

“Kondara MNU/Linux” is developed concurrently on the Alpha(R) and Intel(R) platforms using Compaq’s IA (Intel Architecture) Proliant(R) Server Family, which means Kondara is built to Compaq’s hardware standards. Compaq will extensively support “Kondara MNU/Linux” and Digital Factory will expand on Compaq’s technology to create Alpha platform applications parallel to Intel’s. Together, both companies will share information and build a cooperative support system. Other joint development programs are slated for peripheral technologies and applications of “Kondara MNU/Linux.” This will include the bundling of compiler products such as Compaq’s C, C++, and Fortran. By co-developing peripheral technology, such as drivers, for Alpha, Digital Factory and Compaq will provide reliable high performance Linux systems for mathematically intensive markets.

NSI SOFTWARE SIGNS ASIA PACIFIC DISTRIBUTOR

Hoboken, N.J. — NSI Software announced the signing of a limited, exclusive distribution agreement with Hong Kong-based Software Vision Company, Ltd. As demand for high availability software continues to increase dramatically in the U.S. and overseas, NSI Software has stepped up distribution of its award-winning Double-Take real-time data replication and GeoCluster disaster recovery software, including the Far East. “We’ve seen strong and growing demand in the region (Asia) for our products,” said Don Beeler, CEO of NSI Software. “Formalizing an agreement with SVC, one of the Far East’s premiere distributors and technical service and sales organizations, will help us better meet our world-wide sales efforts.” Software Vision Company, Ltd (SVC) specializes in providing and integrating enterprise-level network solutions for the growing industrial, financial and manufacturing corporations in China, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines and other Far East countries. SVC’s sales team is highly trained in assessing the requirements for enterprise-level customers. “Our customers need sophisticated, reliable systems to run their core businesses,” said Bill Yu, Director of Software Vision Company. “NSI’s Double-Take and GeoCluster solutions provide the highest level of protection for their critical applications and data.”

In addition to formalizing an agreement for major Far East distribution, NSI Software has stepped up distribution with partners in the UK, Germany, and France. “We have great reseller and integration partners all across Europe,” said Mr. Beeler. “And we’ll be making more formal announcements on further distribution agreements in the months to come.” Software Vision Company Ltd. Incorporated in January 1990 is a dynamic information and services company. The company helps clients to address their information needs and concerns through the distribution, marketing, implementation and after-sales support of systems software and database tools for large enterprises.

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