Mobile Essentials Helps Mobile Professionals Quickly Adjust to New Locations

Software Decreases Costs of Supporting Mobile Professionals as IT Creates, Administers Location Profiles

CUPERTINO, Calif. - April 12, 1999 - Symantec Corporation, the world leader in utility software for business and personal computing, announced Mobile Essentials 2.0, a tool used by IS/IT departments to create laptop configuration settings once and then quickly deploy those settings to mobile professionals. Historically a time-consuming and costly effort, supporting a mobile workforce becomes efficient and cost-effective with Mobile Essentials 2.0. By enabling IS/IT to configure laptop settings one time per location and then allowing IT to distribute these settings to any and all mobile professionals, productivity increases across the organization. As mobile workers place fewer calls to the helpdesk for support, the IS/IT department spends less time addressing mobile support issues and more time addressing other corporate issues. And, because mobile professionals, in turn, no longer require telephone support with every location change, they experience a significant increase in productivity.

"As more professionals work out of the office using laptop computers, IS/IT support staff can become swamped with calls from end-users needing help adapting their PCs to new locations. By enabling IS/IT to create and deploy all location profiles for mobile professionals, Mobile Essentials reduces end-user-created problems by eliminating the user's need to change configuration settings. Mobile Essentials reduces the time and money required to support remote workers by preventing many problems from occurring. Consequently, Mobile Essentials significantly reduces the burden of supporting a mobile workforce while ensuring that mobile professionals remain productive," said Christopher Calisi, vice president of the Remote Productivity Solutions Business Unit at Symantec.

How It Works
Mobile professionals typically spend 20 minutes adjusting their PC settings every time they arrive in a new location, such as remote offices, international sites, hotels, or even client sites. These mobile workers also spend a significant amount of time resolving problems caused by incorrect settings, such as network and Internet protocol configurations, which are especially difficult for less technical users to configure. Mobile Essentials drastically reduces this downtime.

IS/IT departments use Mobile Essentials 2.0 to create location profiles -- the laptop settings that must be adjusted when workers travel to different locations -- and then deploy them to their mobile workforce. These location profiles include TCP/IP settings for Internet access and all aspects of network configuration, such as switching between NetWare Bindery and NDS, changing NDS trees and context, specifying a Windows NT domain, turning login scripts on and off, and identifying which drives are mapped and which are shared. Location profiles also include default printer settings, dialing settings -- including area code, calling card, prefixes, and dial-tone detection, and settings for popular applications such as cc:Mail, Lotus Notes, WinFax, Internet Explorer, and Netscape.

IS/IT can deploy location profiles through e-mail or by placing location files on a web site or network server. If deploying settings via e-mail, IS/IT can install an optional e-mail agent on the client machine to automatically intercept the e-mail, add the location profile, and delete the e-mail without end-user intervention.

Once the location profiles are installed, the laptop user starts Windows and selects a location profile. All of the settings change automatically and instantly, resulting in a dramatic decrease in downtime and a significant increase in productivity. When a location profile requires updating, IS/IT deploys the update via e-mail. The update installs automatically, without user intervention, thereby further preventing the possibility of downtime and lost productivity. In addition, if allowed by the IS/IT department, laptop users can add or modify locations when necessary.

Pricing and Availability
Mobile Essentials 2.0 will be available in June. Volume site-license pricing is available by calling 800-745-6054 x.P164.

About Symantec
Symantec is the world leader in utility software for business and personal computing. Symantec products and solutions help make users productive and keep their computers safe and reliable anywhere and anytime. Symantec offers a broad range of solutions and is acclaimed as a leader in both customer satisfaction and product brand recognition. Symantec is traded on Nasdaq under the symbol SYMC. More information on the company and its products can be obtained at www.symantec.com.

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