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News Release Durham County Council (UK) Beats Blaster Worm with Centralized and Unattended Management from ON Technology ON iCommand Patches 5,000 Desktops, Laptops
and Servers in 300 Locations WALTHAM, MA. – Nov. 12, 2003 – ON Technology (NASDAQ: ONTC), a leading provider of enterprise infrastructure management solutions, today announced that the Durham County Council (UK) has implemented ON iCommand™ to provide centralized software management for 5,000 computers located at 300 individual sites. The Council, with a population of nearly half a million people distributed across nearly 900 square miles, has successfully used ON iCommand to automatically deploy the Blaster patch in only 2½ days to all its desktops, laptops and servers, a task that previously required seven weeks using manual methods. In addition, ON iCommand is being used to automate the Council’s migration from Windows® NT to XP and accelerate the roll-out of critical new applications such as Lotus Notes® R6 and Microsoft Office 2003. “In the past, when there was a major virus outbreak, it took seven weeks for a team of six people to patch all our devices. This was a nightmare because it meant other projects were stalled while my staff focused on defending against the virus,” commented Keith Hollins, Support Manager, Durham County Council. “This time round, we deployed a package containing the Microsoft patch almost instantly. We also used ON iCommand to update anti-virus software on each computer and automatically execute a special utility to remove the worm from infected computers. Often it takes a lot of time to get a payback from IT investments, but ON Technology’s software distribution and configuration management solution has delivered instant payback to our organization. From now on, every time we use the solution we will be generating cost savings.” ON iCommand has also dramatically enhanced productivity and reduced the time and cost required to perform the Council’s migration to Windows XP. The Council’s IT managers originally estimated that each 100-computer site would require 13 staff-days to be upgraded using its current tools; with ON iCommand, this time has now been reduced to a single staff-day. ON’s innovative solution provides additional benefits to the Council by lowering travel costs and significantly reducing downtime due to misconfigured or corrupted computers. Previously, when the Council’s Help Desk was unable to resolve an end-user problem over the phone, IT staff were obliged to physically travel to the site. Problematic computers were typically brought back to central IT headquarters for diagnosis and rebuilding, a process that resulted in an additional two to three days of downtime. According to Hollins, “With ON iCommand we can now remotely rebuild a misconfigured or corrupted machine in only an hour – without sending technicians to remote sites. If a problem can’t be resolved in a matter of minutes over the phone, my team can now rebuild the computer from bare metal in the time it takes a user to have lunch. This in itself will generate huge time savings, improve IT response times, and provide greater staff productivity.” Before selecting ON iCommand, the Council used a semi-automated solution consisting of Microsoft SMS for deploying applications and a disk-cloning program for provisioning operating systems. In addition to providing a single unified solution for deploying both operating systems and applications, ON iCommand also delivered a highly-scalable architecture that could easily grow in the future – for example, to manage an additional 15,000 computers belonging to the Council’s educational institutions. The Council also needed an open solution that could be used to manage non-Windows platforms such as Linux. “Upgrading our existing tools would have been very expensive and still wouldn’t have provided us with all the functionality we have now. We are considering the introduction of Linux, so it was important to find a heterogeneous solution like ON iCommand that would allow us to deploy and manage Linux systems,” said Hollins. “In addition, ON’s use of dynamic installation procedures compared to static snapshots really sold us. Alternative solutions were not as rapid to implement, since we would have had to carry out more development and testing because each individual configuration requires a separate snapshot package.” About ON Technology Corporation ###
ON Technology, ON Command, and ON Command CCM are registered trademarks, and the ON logo and ON iCommand are trademarks of ON Technology Corporation. Microsoft and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other brand names and trademarks are properties of their respective owners. The statements in this press release that relate to ON Technology’s future plans, events and performance are forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks and uncertainties. Some of the important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements are general economic conditions, including the current weakness in the global economy, demand for the Company’s products and services, performance of the Company’s direct and indirect distribution channels, competitive pressures, market acceptance of the Company’s new products and technologies, and the risk factors detailed from time to time in ON Technology’s periodic reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including without limitation the Company’s Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the third quarter of 2003 filed in November 2003. Actual results and performance may differ materially due to these and other factors. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this press release. ON Technology undertakes no obligation to release publicly any updates or revisions to any forward-looking statements contained in this press release that may reflect events or circumstances occurring after the date of this press release.
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