SHORT TAKES

CADENCE & HP TO DEVELOP ELECTRONIC DESIGN SOLUTIONS

San Jose, CA — Cadence Design Systems, Inc. and Hewlett-Packard Company announced a far-reaching business alliance whereby the companies will jointly develop, market, and sell new solutions for the electronic design automation (EDA) market. The combined research and development (R&D) power of these two market leaders will provide EDA customers worldwide with enhanced quality solutions and performance-powered time-to-market for electronic designs. Under the terms of the agreement, Cadence will adopt HP-UX as a preferred product development and support platform and operating system. HP has selected Cadence as a preferred provider of EDA design tools for HP’s R&D groups, including a very strong commitment to Cadence SP&R (synthesis/place-and-route) technology. Cadence will support the HP-UX operating environment on Intel’s 64-bit IA-64 architecture, the next-generation microprocessor architecture jointly developed by HP and Intel.

“Momentum in the EDA market is accelerating as chips make their way into all kinds of appliances and devices,” said HP president and chief executive officer Carly Fiorina. “Cadence and HP will work together to optimize solutions that meet the increasing engineering demands for greater performance and next-generation architectures. This symbiotic relationship will significantly accelerate delivery to customers of higher quality products with innovative functionality.” Cadence president and chief executive officer Ray Bingham said, “Cadence leads the world in EDA technology and solutions because satisfying customers guides our strategy. Customer satisfaction is what drives us also to go beyond products and create new business models and partnerships. HP, under Carly’s fresh leadership, embraces innovation that will lead to customer benefits. Our strategic relationship with HP leverages the customer focus that the two companies share. This relationship should result in many benefits for the electronics industry over the long term.” Visit http://www.hp.com or http://www.cadence.com for more information.

CISCO SYSTEMS TO BUY NETIVERSE FOR $210 MILLION

San Jose, CA — Cisco Systems Inc., the No. 1 maker of data networking gear, on Friday, July 7 said it would buy Netiverse Inc., a developer of hardware and software technology for speeding the delivery of Web content, for $210 million in stock. Privately held Netiverse would be the 13th company Cisco has bought this year and the 61st since 1993 as it continues its breakneck pace of expanding its product portfolio through acquisitions. Cisco has said it would buy 20 to 25 companies this year. San Jose-based Cisco said it currently holds a 20 percent stake in Netiverse, also headquartered in San Jose. Netiverse provides Cisco with content acceleration technology and expertise to help Cisco advance the development of next-generation content networking solutions. Cisco said that it would soon add Netiverse’s technology across its own product line, which includes routers, switches and other gear that form the basis of the Internet and other computer networks. Netiverse’s technology pre-processes content, and a Cisco spokeswoman said it works with all of Cisco’s content-networking products.

In connection with the acquisition, Cisco said it expects a one-time write-off of up to 2 cents per share for purchased in-process research and development expenses. The acquisition has been approved by the board of directors of each company. The acquisition will be accounted for as a purchase and is expected to be completed in the first quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2001. Cisco stock rose 5/8 to close at 65-3/8. The stock has traded in a range of 28-1/16 to 82 in the past year.

HP SIGNS GLOBAL AGREEMENT WITH JNI

San Diego, CA — JNI Corporation, a fast growing Fibre Channel host bus adapter company, announced it has signed a three-year, global value-added reseller agreement with Hewlett-Packard Company to supply JNI’s FibreStar host bus adapters for HP servers and storage subsystems. The agreement covers JNI’s entire line of FibreStar PCI and SBus host bus adapters (HBAs), which includes the Unix and PC Server DriverSuite operating system drivers, and EZ Fibre configuration and management utility software. The JNI PCI HBAs support all Fibre Channel topologies under most major operating systems, including HP-UX, Microsoft Windows 2000/Windows NT, Sun Microsystems Solaris, Novell NetWare, Red Hat Linux, IBM AIX, and Apple Mac OS. The JNI SBus HBAs are designed for Solaris-based systems and also support all Fibre Channel topologies including fabric. JNI is the only major HBA manufacturer to offer full-fabric support on multiple operating systems for both PCI and SBus-based servers.

“Worldwide, HP installations requiring Fibre Channel run the gamut of operating systems and bus protocols,” said Paul Balnys, worldwide marketing manager of HP Complementary Products. “JNI’s multiple operating system support and PCI and SBus HBAs offer HP customers a unique single source to meet their diverse demands for Fibre Channel connectivity. This agreement helps HP meet the myriad requirements for deploying storage area networks (SANs) at the enterprise-level around the globe.” “Our recent collaborations with HP have given us rapid exposure to its U.S. customers, and with this agreement, significantly expands our exposure to HP’s international customer base as well,” said Roland J. Thibodeau, executive vice president of sales for JNI Corp. “HP’s reputation for quality and its role as one of the world’s leading SAN vendors matches perfectly with the reputation we’ve developed for providing the highest quality Fibre Channel adapters for SANs in mission-critical, enterprise-level applications.” Previously, JNI announced its membership in HP’s Open SAN Initiative (Feb. 8, 2000), qualifying its HBAs for the HP Equation architecture products, including the HP SureStore E SAN Manager software, as well as participating in the HP Open SAN Software Program, HP SAN Interoperability Program and HP SAN Integration Centers. JNI also has several agreements with key OEMs that supply products for HP systems and storage groups, including Hitachi Data Systems and StorageTek.

FUJITSU TO SUPPORT MICROSOFT .NET FRAMEWORK

San Jose, CA — Fujitsu Software Corporation provided further details of its support for Microsoft’s .NET Framework. This announcement sets the stage for Fujitsu Software Corporation’s participation at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) 2000 in Orlando, Florida. “Understanding the benefits of the Microsoft .NET Framework for COBOL programmers begins with appreciating the value of the Microsoft .NET Framework’s common language runtime,” said Basim Kadhim, chief architect, COBOL Product Group, for Fujitsu Software Corporation. “The runtime is a unifying architecture that provides the building blocks for language interoperability, security, and robustness. As Microsoft takes its .NET Framework to other devices, such as Windows CE devices, Fujitsu COBOL will be there as a first class language.” The common language runtime exposes an object-oriented type system and an intermediate language, called MSIL, that programming language vendors can target to work with the Microsoft .NET Framework. Fujitsu is constructing a new COBOL compiler to target the common language runtime so that COBOL programmers have seamless access to all that the .NET Framework has to offer. John Montgomery, group product manager for the .NET Framework at Microsoft Corp., said, “COBOL is a key language in enterprise application development. When we set out to build elements of the .NET Framework, we realized that we would need to provide the ability for languages such as COBOL to take full advantage of the framework. We are therefore delighted to have Fujitsu COBOL participate in the .NET initiative.”

All of the programming languages in the Microsoft Visual Studio family and other languages supported by third parties will also be capable of targeting the .NET Framework. “By supporting the .NET Framework, Fujitsu COBOL will have the best solution for language interoperability of any COBOL vendor in the market,” said Ron Langer, director COBOL Sales and Marketing, for Fujitsu Software Corporation. Targeting the .NET Framework is also a prerequisite for direct language support of Active Server Pages+ (ASP+), Microsoft’s successor to ASP. ASP+ uses an architecture that compiles Web pages, which results in tremendous performance gains. This architecture opens the door for compiled languages, such as COBOL, to be used directly in Web pages where previously only interpreted languages were usable. Similarly, Microsoft’s new Web Services can be built using languages that target the .NET Framework. “We are very excited about providing COBOL developers with the tools to build end-to-end business applications on a variety of platforms, all in COBOL,” said Langer. Visit http://www.fujitsu.com/ for more information.

1MAGE SOFTWARE/NEURALOG ALLIANCE PROVIDES FREEDOM

Englewood, COLO. — 1mage Software, Inc. and Neuralog Inc. jointly announced the formation of a strategic alliance to provide state-of-the-art information management tools for the petroleum industry. For the first time, by merging their respective technologies, an Internet-ready document imaging and management system capable of digitizing a global archive of well and land files is available for oil and gas companies preparing for the Information Age. “Providing remote, secure Internet access to every file document and log image to field engineers, geologists and land men equipped with a mobile computer, modem and a wireless communication link is a logical step toward increasing efficiency,” states 1mage Software, Inc. President and CEO David DeYoung.

“We believe this new program will provide the first complete system to scan, index and archive every document in a well and land file,” says Robert Best, President and CEO of Houston, Texas-based Neuralog, Inc. “By combining 1mage Software’s proven document scanning and management capability with the new NeuraScanner log scanner, every paper document and log can be scanned, indexed, archived, retrieved, printed, faxed, e-mailed and viewed over the Internet,” stated Best. “The ability to store millions of document and log images in an off-site archive media like tape or CDs protects a company’s most valuable resource – ‘Information.’ This lost potential was recently seen when a tornado struck down the Fort Worth headquarters of an O & G company,” stated Best. “Our document imaging and management system is already a valuable asset for several petroleum companies, but until now there was no effective way to make well logs part of the e-commerce environment. NeuraScanner from Neuralog has finally filled that gap, and this new system makes global access to every document and log in the system a reality,” DeYoung concludes. Visit http://www.neuralog.com for more information.

CNT AND NORTEL NETWORKS TO COLLABORATE

Minneapolis, MINN. — Computer Network Technology (CNT), a leader in storage networking, and Nortel Networks, a leader in the development of new, high-performance optical networks and Internet Protocol (IP) infrastructures, announced plans to simplify storage area network (SAN) integration into enterprise IP and optical networks. This cooperative effort is based on existing, tested technologies, including Nortel Networks’ metropolitan and long-haul optical products, along with CNT’s protocol adaptation technologies and established standards work groups. It will provide the fastest path to integration of SAN fabrics into enterprise-class IP and optical networks. CNT and Nortel Networks will collaborate on the design and development of technologies and solutions that integrate SAN applications and infrastructure with the Optical Internet, both metro and long haul.

The collaboration will take place in two stages. The first is “Near term”: Deployment of service provider based SAN solutions that will package products and services from both companies, including Nortel Networks’ OPTera Metro multi-service platforms, CNT’s UltraNet Director, CNT SAN Integration Services, etc. into a single customer offering. The next stage is “Longer term”: Work will begin immediately on the specification of new vertically integrated solutions combining IP, Optics, FC, SCSI, Escon, and other technologies, with a focus on optimization of these technologies for networked storage applications over service provider networks. CNT and Nortel Networks will work closely with the service provider community on the development of this specification. Visit http://www.nortelnetworks.com or http://www.cnt.com for more information.

PARASOFT AND CODEMARKET TEAM UP

Monrovia, CA — ParaSoft, a leading provider of software error prevention and error detection solutions, announced a partnership with CodeMarket, a global software development network where software developers and development managers can go to find and purchase both freelance development work and ready-to-run Java components. The partnership was developed to bring more certainty to the marketplace for outsourced software component development. ParaSoft’s Jtest, a well-respected Java unit testing tool, will be the standard tool by which all components outsourced or purchased through CodeMarket will be tested. With the shortage of software developers and the need for faster turn-around, development managers have begun to move more of their development efforts to freelance developers. In fact, many are now purchasing individual software components rather than contracting out entire applications.

“A major barrier to the effective outsourcing of software development is the quality issue,” says CodeMarket President Shawn Mitchell. “It has been very difficult, if not impossible, historically to determine the quality of software without compromising the intellectual property rights of the authors. Before our partnership with ParaSoft, there was no way to know whether or not the code being purchased met any objective standard of completeness and operability.” Companies who need specific components built, can give CodeMarket their set project specifications and exact performance requirements. CodeMarket then takes this information and matches these requirements with the appropriate freelance developers. Once these developers have built the components, they test them with ParaSoft’s Jtest to ensure that they meet the required specifications and that they function properly. “By integrating Jtest into CodeMarket’s testing regiment, CodeMarket customers can feel confident in the quality of the components they receive,” says ParaSoft Executive Vice President Arthur Hicken. “Testing is a critical part of software development, and now even outsourced components can be thoroughly tested and evaluated so that they meet developers specifications.” Visit http://www.parasoft.com for more information.

MENTOR GRAPHICS AND DASSAULT SYSTEMES FORM ALLIANCE

Wilsonville, ORE. — Dassault Systemes and Mentor Graphics announced a strategic alliance to develop an integrated V5 Electronic/Mechanical Design Solution (EMDA) that will accelerate the end-to-end development cycle of complex electro-mechanical systems. As leaders in electronic systems design, mechanical design and manufacturing automation, Mentor Graphics and Dassault Systemes will combine their strengths to extend the benefits of collaborative design and B2B design practices across the entire product development cycle and between multiple design disciplines. With this approach, manufacturers of complex electro-mechanical products within the consumer electronics, telecommunications, and transportation markets, will be able to simulate a true virtual prototype of their product design and streamline the entire product development process.

Said Dominique Florack, Executive Vice-President, Research & Development, Dassault Systemes, “Our objective, through this alliance with Mentor Graphics, is to help the electromechanical market to drastically enhance its collaborative design-to-order and build-to-order capabilities, through continuous deliveries of integrated EMDA solutions as part of V5 PLM initiative.” “It’s come to the point where it’s no longer efficient to design the electrical and mechanical portions of a product independently”, said Henry Potts, Vice-President & General Manager, Mentor Graphics, “When 40% of an automobile’s content is contributed by the car’s electronics, or when the mechanical design of a consumer electronics product can make or break a product’s market success- it is clear that we are now playing by new rules. The challenge is how to help our customers design, build and deploy complex electro-mechanical systems faster, cheaper, better. With Dassault Systemes, the world leading mechanical company as our partner, we’re in a unique position to do just that.” Visit http://www.dsweb.com for more information.

AVCOM TO MARKET CONTINUOUS AVAILABILITY SERVERS

Palo Alto, CA — Resilience Corporation, the continuous availability server company, and AVCOM Technologies, one of the largest Sun National Systems Partners in the United States, have signed a national agreement where AVCOM will market Resilient SPARC-based Continuous Availability servers as part of their portfolio of advanced, integrated IT solutions. “Today’s dedicated Internet applications such as firewalls, web servers, and e-commerce solutions absolutely demand the highest levels of hardware availability,” said Brad Bishop, CEO of AVCOM. “Joining forces with Resilience leverages the strong SPARC and Solaris expertise we have developed over the years and gives AVCOM a simple, economical, appliance-like approach to meeting our customer’s high availability needs in this exploding area.”

Resilient Continuous Availability Servers are designed to provide 99.999% hardware availability. Applications that run on a Resilient server continue to run with no downtime or data loss in the event of any hardware failure, making them ideal for critical application areas such as IT security, network monitoring and e-business. Based on Ultra SPARC II, Resilient servers run any Solaris application without modification and can be deployed out of the box within 30 minutes. “We are delighted that AVCOM, one of the most successful and respected Sun National Systems Partners in the US, will market our Resilient Continuous Availability servers,” said Denny Olmsted, Resilience President and CEO. “AVCOM is a leading player in the high availability market. The combination of their expertise and our Continuous Availability servers is a sure-fire winner.” Visit http://www.avcom.com or http://www.resilience.com for more information.

GES ANNOUNCES STORAGETEK LIBRARY SUPPORT

Boulder, COLO. — Gresham Enterprise Storage (GES), http://www.greshamstorage.com , announced the release of a new version of their Enterprise DistribuTAPE software, which is specifically designed to connect a Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) server to StorageTek 9840 tape drives installed in mainframe-attached libraries. This allows StorageTek library users to extend the utilization of their mainframe libraries to open systems and centralize storage management for their TSM server. Using Enterprise DistribuTAPE Single Server Edition (EDT SSE), users can mount tape drives in our mainframe-attached library and dedicate those drives to the open systems TSM server. Users benefit from centralized media management and high-performance backup for open systems data.

“Our network-enabled version of EDT was already SAN-capable and allowed users to share drives and media either direct connected or over a fibre channel SAN. We developed EDT SSE to provide a storage solution for customers who needed to connect their drives to a TSM server but did not need to share them over a SAN. EDT SSE provides users with the opportunity to upgrade existing Silos and develop a centralized media management strategy,” said John McIntosh, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for GES. “As users’ open systems storage needs grow over time, they can upgrade to the network-enabled version of EDT, which will allow them to dynamically share the drives between all of their servers.” Visit http://www.greshamstorage.com for more information.

NETWORK APPLIANCE & FUJITSU SIEMENS FORM ALLIANCE

Sunnyvale, CA — Network Appliance, Inc., a leading provider of network-attached data access and content management solutions, and Fujitsu Siemens Computers announced a strategic alliance that establishes Fujitsu Siemens Computers as a reseller of Network Appliance filers throughout Europe. NetApp filers extend Fujitsu Siemens Computers’ solutions for online storage, archiving, storage management software, and storage networking. According to Dataquest, Network Appliance storage systems account for approximately 60 percent of the worldwide NAS market. NetApp filers are designed to manage multiterabyte capacities of stored data and directly attach to corporate networks, offering a scalable solution to managing large amounts of Internet and enterprise applications data in a single system. With exceptionally high performance and high availability that exceeds 99.99 percent uptime, NetApp filers can simultaneously manage and administer data sharing in both Windows NT and UNIX environments.

“The alliance with the NAS market leader, Network Appliance, underlines our strategy of offering our customers solutions which are based on best-in-class products,” explains Dr. Helmut Beck, head of the storage division at Fujitsu Siemens Computers. “The combination of FSC’s solutions competence and Network Appliance’s outstanding products, is a win-win for our companies and customers.” “We are excited about the partnership with Fujitsu Siemens Computers. Our innovative storage solutions for database, ERP, e-commerce, and enterprise applications match perfectly with a European leader in enterprise computing that offers market-proven expertise in the storage market,” says Ian Henderson, managing director, Europe, at Network Appliance. “We are looking forward to a successful working relationship as we penetrate new market opportunities throughout Europe.”

CIRRUS LOGIC TEAMS WITH SONY FOR CD-RW CAPACITY

Austin, TEXAS — Cirrus Logic Inc., an industry leader of ReWritable Compact Disc (CD-RW) chips, announced a new CD-RW drive device that offers twice the storage capacity of current solutions. This new double-density encoder/decoder, designated the CR3490, makes it possible to store 1.3 gigabytes of data on a single CD-RW disc, and boasts the industry’s fastest write (16x) and read (48x) speeds. Cirrus Logic was the first company to deliver a device capable of those speeds and now offers the first device that will meet the new Double-Density CD-ROM/-R/-RW (or DDCD) specification from Sony and Philips when it is finalized.

With more than 10 million CD-RW devices shipped to date, Cirrus Logic holds 35 percent of the burgeoning CD-RW drive market and continues to be the technology and performance leader. This market is already making its way, as a standard feature, into high- and medium-end OEM PCs and is expected to be the removable storage drive of choice, replacing the floppy. According to Mary Craig at industry research firm Dataquest, “CD-RW will be the dominant, re-writeable, high-capacity removable storage device on personal computers (PCs) by the middle of this decade.” With 1.3 gigabytes of storage, consumers will be able to store twice the number of compressed audio files or family photographs and can back up more conventional data on a single CD, an affordable medium that is reusable many times over. In the drive market, where high speeds are imperative, Cirrus Logic is the proven speed leader. “We chose to work with Cirrus Logic on this very strategic program for Sony, as we have throughout the history of our optical storage business, because of their leading edge technology and performance,” says Hiroshi Yamanouchi, senior general manager, Sony Optical Storage Division, Tokyo, Japan. Visit http://www.cirrus.com for more information.

MICROTEST TEAMS WITH JMR

Chatsworth, CA — Microtest, Inc., a leading developer of network-attached storage (NAS) operating systems and appliances, and JMR Electronics, Inc., a designer and manufacturer of powered subsystem and mass storage enclosures, announced a partnership to provide the first NAS engine-enclosure combination for the storage VAR and integrator channels. The NAS platform enables VARs to quickly configure solutions for specific customer applications. The partnership entails a JMR Fortra storage enclosure redesigned to readily accommodate Microtest’s FileZerver engine. Distributors will sell the product combination as a kit SKU, to which only hard drives and optional tape drives need be added. This pre-certified, plug-and-play solution will reduce installation and support overhead costs for VARs and integrators and can be private-labeled by those who choose to market the NAS platform under their own brand.

“Our NAS development partnership with JMR Electronics, one of the preeminent storage enclosure manufacturers in the world, will allow us to provide the foundation of a mid-range NAS solution for our storage integrators,” said Rob Strong, Director of Sales, Microtest Network Appliances and Storage. “As a result of this partnership, our storage integrators and VARs will enjoy shorter time to market, access to cross-trained technical support teams and sales opportunities.” Market education is necessary to establish a broad market acceptance of NAS. JMR and Microtest will work together to increase understanding of NAS appliance benefits by way of joint training sessions, road shows and advertising campaigns. “JMR’s partnership with Microtest in this endeavor clearly demonstrates our commitment and support to all facets of the storage market,” said Duran Alabi, Director of Strategic Marketing for JMR. “We are confident our global presence in the storage industry complements Microtest’s excellent network-attached solutions, with their highly rated FileZerver product. We at JMR receive hundreds of inquiries weekly from people looking for this type of solution. This initiative will allow our VARs, integrators and distributors to offer a reliable, certified and cost-effective NAS solution.” Visit http://www.jmr.com or http://www.microtest.com for more information.

MULTIGEN-PARADIGM AND VIEWPOINT DIGITAL TEAM UP

San Jose, CA — MultiGen-Paradigm (MPI), and Viewpoint Digital, Inc., (Viewpoint) both wholly-owned subsidiaries of Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA), announced the two companies have joined to form Viewpoint Visualization, Inc. a wholly-owned subsidiary of CA. Viewpoint Visualization supports CA’s mission to deliver the end-to-end infrastructure that enables eBusiness and brings the benefits of 3D visualization to training, simulation, enterprise, entertainment and e-commerce applications. “CA strives to create an exceptional combination of talent, tools, services and partners to help our clients produce compelling and insightful enterprise and eBusiness solutions,” said Ken F. Fitzpatrick, general manager, marketing for Computer Associates. “The genesis of Viewpoint Visualization uniquely positions the company to provide a broad range of products and services that enable customers to communicate and process complex information visually,” Fitzpatrick continued.

Viewpoint Visualization will further advance the capabilities of CA’s leading edge products and technologies including Unicenter TNG, Jasmine ii and Neugents. Through 3D visualization, CA clients can provide differentiating value in their eBusiness applications, improve the productivity of their employees and partners, and develop compelling content that gives them a competitive edge on the Web. The company will continue to develop next-generation, industry leading 3D products and services for the online retail, entertainment, urban simulation, broadcasting, aerospace and defense industries. Viewpoint Visualization is led by a seasoned management team including Dave Rolston, formerly president and CEO of MultiGen-Paradigm, who has been appointed president and general manager of Viewpoint Visualization. Michael Lundberg, former president of Viewpoint Digital, will proceed as senior vice president of sales and marketing for Viewpoint Visualization. The company’s headquarters are in San Jose, California and operates offices in Draper, Utah; Los Angeles, California; Dallas, Texas; and London, England. Visit http://www.ca.com for more information.

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