SHORT TAKES

NEC EXTENDS STRATEGIC ALLIANCE WITH EMC

Sacramento, CALIF. — NEC Computers Inc., a leading provider of mobile, desktop and server computing solutions for the enterprise market announced it has extended its strategic alliance with EMC Corporation, a world leader in information storage. NEC Computers will now offer EMC’s CLARiiON FC5300 fibre channel RAID storage system as an option with its Express5800 servers to North American Windows NT and Windows 2000 customers. EMC’s Symmetrix Enterprise Storage systems have been available on NEC Express5800 servers since late 1998. The availability of EMC’s CLARiiON systems with NEC Express5800 servers gives NEC Computers’ customers a full range of information security, scalability and performance options. “Our alliance with EMC underscores NEC Computers’ commitment to deliver complete computing solutions and cutting-edge technology to enterprise environments,” said Stephen Blanchette, vice president of NEC Computers Server Business Unit. “The CLARiiON FC5300 fibre channel RAID storage system provides our customers with high functionality, performance, and availability, making this a very attractive and cost-effective solution.”

“EMC and NEC Computers have worked closely for the past several years to provide customers with solutions that allow them to build an information infrastructure capable of meeting all of the information storage demands of their enterprise,” said Todd Gresham, EMC’s vice president of Systems Alliances. “The addition of CLARiiON storage systems gives NEC Express5800 server customers a powerful solution for their Internet and e-business applications.” The EMC CLARiiON FC5300 fibre channel RAID storage system is a flexible, high-performance mid-range storage system that is optimized to provide customers with significant cost/performance benefits. Optional redundant components and dual active storage processors provide high levels of availability and data protection, making this storage system one of the most advanced in its class. Optional software tools include the Navisphere storage management suite, which configures, monitors, and tunes the disk arrays, and ATF data path failover software, which reroutes traffic automatically in case of failure.

SECOND-LARGEST DEAL IN SEMICONDUCTOR HISTORY

San Jose, CA — Applied Micro Circuits Corp., which makes chips for the optical networking market, said it would acquire MMC Networks in a $4.5 billion deal designed to flesh out its product line. Applied Micro said the deal is not only the largest of a series of strategic acquisitions it has made over the last few years, but the second biggest semiconductor merger in history. It ranks behind Texas Instruments Inc’s recent $6.1 billion deal to acquire Burr-Brown Corp. Under the agreement, Applied Micro would issue 0.619 of a share for each share of MMC Networks. MMC, a Sunnyvale, Calif.-based chip maker, specialises in network processors, traffic management and switch fabric technology, which Applied Micro said had been one of the missing links in its own product line. Applied Micro sells chips to large networking companies like Cisco Systems Inc and Lucent and is working to become a more complete supplier.

“It used to be that half a dozen vendors were needed to supply all the chips for an Internet router,” Dave Rickey, chief executive of San Diego-based Applied Micro, said in an interview. “Now we can offer all of them.” Applied Micro Circuits set out to become a broader supplier back in 1998 when it acquired the chip maker 10 Mountains Design. It accelerated the strategy earlier this year with the purchases of three additional companies. Rickey said it was almost certain to make more acquisitions in the future to keep up with the rapidly growing and evolving demands of the high-speed Internet. “We’re never done,” he said. “The network is developing so fast now that nobody has time to reinvent the wheel.” Because of the pace of change in the industry, Rickey said it was often more efficient to grow by acquisition rather than internal development.

Rickey said he expected high-speed Internet communications chips to be a $6 billion market by 2003, more than triple its current size. Applied Micro, which last month reported first quarter revenues of $74 million, more than double the year-ago level, will also capture a larger portion of the overall market as it acquires other players, Rickey said. In the first quarter ended in June, Applied Micro earned $27.9 million, almost a four-fold increase from the year before. Rickey said he saw no reason “to expect a slowdown anytime soon.” The company’s stock has been one of Wall Street’s favourites this year, now trading above $188 per share, up from a 52-week low of $22. The MMC acquisition is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year, the companies said.

ANSYS ANNOUNCES STRATEGIC ALLIANCE WITH HP

Southpointe, PA — ANSYS, Inc. announced they have formed a strategic alliance with Hewlett-Packard Company to supply ANSYS, Inc. cutting-edge engineering simulation software that runs on the HP UNIX operating system (HP-UX) using Intel’s new IA-64 workstations and servers. ANSYS 5.6 will be demonstrated for the first time running on an HP-UX 11.0 based Intel IA-64 computational system at the 2000 ANSYS Conference and Exhibition August 28-30, 2000 in Pittsburgh, PA. ANSYS, Inc. is the driving force behind the collaborative revolution in computer-aided engineering (CAE) and offers engineering simulation tools to fit the needs of users throughout the design process. This HP-UX with an IA-64 port is one more way that ANSYS, Inc. combines forces with industry leaders to meet customer demand. Collectively, ANSYS, Inc., HP, and Intel provide users of engineering simulation software with the ability to run large models on high-performance workstations.

“The HP-UX operating system supported and supplied by HP, represents the opportunity to deploy computational servers with a competitive price-performance ratio. These systems will provide customers with flexibility for implementation as Web or LAN servers, while running the ANSYS engineering simulation software. Customers also gain the inherent cost advantage of UNIX-based computational clusters to address the needs of the CAE market,” said Sam Murgie, Technical Fellow, ANSYS, Inc. “We are fortunate to have such an outstanding partner in HP. Our customers will be among the first to realize the price-performance benefits of ANSYS operating on UNIX, powered by the Intel IA-64 microarchitecture.” “It is thrilling to see the HP/ANSYS technical team create the first CAE application port ever to run on IA-64,” said Lee Fisher, HP strategic alliance manager for ANSYS, Inc. “As engineers using ANSYS increasingly run more sophisticated studies, they will demand the immense floating point power of the IA-64 architecture and HP’s always-on infrastructure,” he continued.

AMS JOINS VA LINUX SOLUTIONS PARTNER PROGRAM

Redlands, CA — Advanced Management Solutions (AMS), a market leader in solutions for enterprise project and resource management, has announced that it has joined the VA Linux Solution Partner Program. VA Linux Systems, is the expert provider of Linux and Open Source solutions for the Web. Advanced Management Solutions develops and markets AMS REALTIME, the first enterprise project management suite to be available on Linux. As a member of VA’s Partner program, Advanced Management Solutions will have access to VA Linux Systems’ broad-based technical expertise in systems, software design and Open Source solutions.

Richard Hayden, Vice President of Marketing with Advanced Management Solutions commented, “We are delighted to join the VA Linux Solutions Partner Program to help accelerate adoption of Linux as an enterprise platform. Our suite of applications is available on the Linux operating system as part of our strategy of allowing customer choice. Our customers are recognizing the benefits of deploying enterprise project management solutions in the Linux environment with its proven benefits of reliability, flexibility and economy.” Kirk Shorte, Market Development Manager for ISVs with VA Linux Systems, commented, “The availability of enterprise applications such as AMS REALTIME on Linux is helping Linux gain momentum as a mission-critical operating system for corporations large and small.” Advanced Management Solutions (AMS) provides innovative project and resource management software together with implementation services that enables organizations to effectively plan and control their work, time and resources in real time. AMS REALTIME products are widely recognized for providing a powerful combination of functionality, flexibility, usability and extremely high performance. Designed for enterprise-wide implementation, the software can support hundreds or even thousands of users without sacrificing performance.

CONTINUUM RESOURCES AND COHERE PLAN TO COLLABORATE

Houston, TEXAS — Continuum Resources (CoRe) and Cohere Networks announced they have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to collaborate on joint marketing and technology opportunities. The planned collaboration combines CoRe’s software visualization and collaboration solutions for the petroleum industry with Cohere’s network-based multimedia solutions and comprehensive network and applications infrastructure, including a high-speed IP network, distributed network storage and network-based computation. CoRe and Cohere will integrate the two companies’ offerings to provide their customers with visualization and collaboration services running across Cohere’s secure private network. According to Cohere Vice President Peter King, the CoRe offering will be accessible to Cohere’s enterprise customers through a custom enterprise portal, the Cohere Console.

Dave Ridyard, Chief Operating Officer at CoRe summarized the opportunity: “It will allow us to integrate and co-market Cohere’s network infrastructure and multimedia services with CoRe’s data integration, visualization and collaboration software. We’ll co-market Cohere’s services to CoRe’s customer base in the petroleum exploration and production industry, and, by the same token, Cohere will promote CoRe’s interactive immersive data browser CoReExplorer as the preferred data management and visualization tool for the industry.” The two parties expect to enter into a definitive agreement by the end of the third quarter of 2000.

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