Ozzy,
Here it is!
NetFRAME unveils aggressive new sales and marketing strategy; company offers comparable prices with mainstream PC server suppliers; opens platform to certified third-party peripherals; authorizes reseller channel to sell fully integrated systems NetFRAME unveils aggressive new sales and marketing strategy; company offers comparable prices with mainstream PC server suppliers; opens platform to certified third-party peripherals; authorizes reseller channel to sell fully integrated systems April 28, 1997 1:53 PM EDT
MILPITAS, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 28, 1997--NetFRAME Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ:NETF), the leading supplier of continuous availability network servers, today unveiled an aggressive new sales and marketing strategy that has significantly reduced the price of the company's server technology.
The company has reduced the price of its CPU and I/O electronics, opened the NF9000 server platform to certified third-party peripherals, and will authorize its reseller channel to provide customers with fully integrated systems using those third-party components.
This announcement marks the latest in a series of moves that have taken NetFRAME from the proprietary, superserver market into the mainstream PC server market. In 1996, the company helped create the I2O intelligent I/O standard, and introduced the NF9000, its first fully standards-based server platform. As part of the transition, NetFRAME replaced a proprietary server I/O system with its award-winning, standards-based triple-peer PCI architecture.
With this announcement, NetFRAME is able to offer superior system availability and performance at a price comparable with that of a standard PC server. In addition to significantly reducing the price of the NF9000 CPU and I/O electronics, the company unveiled its first certified third-party vendor and components list. The list contains multiple suppliers for a number of key technologies, including network interface cards (NICs), memory, storage subsystems and other PC peripherals.
The company also announced that it will authorize its reseller channel to combine NF9000 CPU and I/O electronics with certified components and peripherals to provide customers with fully integrated systems. Resellers are now able to purchase complete NetFRAME systems as before, or can choose to integrate certified third party components with NetFRAME CPU and I/O electronics as well as NetFRAME value added software.
"This announcement moves NetFRAME to the head of the PC server class," said Steve Huey, vice president of marketing at NetFRAME. "While users have always valued NetFRAME's core server availability and scalability technology, NetFRAME servers have historically demanded a price premium. Now, everyone can enjoy the reliability, performance and capacity of a NetFRAME server, for the price of a basic PC server. The move up to a NetFRAME is a simple plug-in, and is very low risk. Our goal is to make it a 'no-brainer' decision to choose NetFRAME."
"This is an important strategic move for NetFRAME," said Jerry Sheridan, director/principal analyst at Dataquest. "NetFRAME will now be competitive in a higher-volume market, which can enable them to increase their sales, associated with the company making alliances with the appropriate reseller partners. Meanwhile, this announcement offers two key benefits to users. First, they can now purchase the same NetFRAME server at nearly half the cost. Second, users have more system design flexibility through the new option of purchasing NetFRAME's core server technology and then integrating it with approved off-the-shelf third party products."
The award-winning NF9000 features a high-performance PCI-based architecture, and is compatible with standard PC-based storage, memory and peripherals. In addition to providing standards-based Pentium Pro SMP server functionality, the NF9000 provides a number of unique features, including HotAdd/HotSwap PCI, a high-throughput triple-peer PCI I/O architecture, automatic I/O channel restart, NIC redundancy, load sharing and failover, and IntraPulse, a self-contained server monitoring subsystem.
Practical Details
New pricing for the NF9000 was released on April 15 to NetFRAME resellers which repositions the product line to be very competitive with similarly configured PC servers.
About NetFRAME Systems Incorporated
Founded in 1987, NetFRAME Systems Incorporated is the leader in enterprise-class multiprocessor servers offering continuous availability and scalability while supporting industry-standard software. NetFRAME's servers provide a compelling price/performance alternative to networked server proliferation and are field-upgradeable as a customer's needs grow. NetFRAME ClusterSystems are sold through resellers and system integrators worldwide. For information, contact NetFRAME via the World Wide Web at www.netframe.com, or call 408/474-1000.
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