NEWS
Tuesday December 15, 12:30 pm Eastern Time
Company Press Release
UniComp and Oracle Form Strategic
Partnership
MARIETTA, Ga.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 15, 1998--UNICOMP, INC. (NASDAQ: UCMP
- news) today announced that its subsidiary, Unibol, Inc., a market leader in application rehosting
products and Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL - news), the world's leading supplier of software for
information management, have formed a strategic partnership.
This partnership will offer IBM AS/400 Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) worldwide a
cost-effective, fast-track approach to selling their existing AS/400 software applications into the
rapidly expanding market for enterprise-class solutions running with Oracle under Microsoft
Windows NT Server.
According to Gartner Group's Tom Bittman, VP and Research Director - Server Strategies, ''NT
and Intel servers are enjoying a rapid growth of server market share that will continue to grow to
about 45 percent of the server market by 2003(1). Packaged-application ISVs built the large
AS/400 installed base, but the same ISVs are hedging their bets with NT strategies(2).''
The Unibol/Oracle partnership will provide AS/400 ISVs with a comprehensive partner support
program, called the EnableNT Partner Program, designed to assist partners in the process of
rehosting their applications on Windows NT servers with Oracle and to market these applications to
their customers. The EnableNT Partner Program is now entering controlled release with a select
number of partners. General release is expected to follow at the end of March 1999.
Kernel to the rehosting process is Unibol's UNIBOL400 product. This product mirrors the
functionality of AS/400 under Windows NT and the high level of compatibility enables existing
AS/400 applications to be rebuilt and delivered on Windows NT and fully integrated with Oracle's
RDBMS without time consuming and expensive code rewrites and staff retraining.
Manuel de Font-Reaulx, Oracle's Senior Director of Alliances & Technologies division in EMEA
states: ''With their applications running On Oracle, AS/400 solution providers can effectively
expand their business to new markets. The partnership between Unibol and Oracle brings AS/400
ISVs a very straight forward way of rehosting their applications on the NT platform while, at the
same time, delivering the same quality of working environment to the end user.''
Oracle's proven reliability, scalability and performance makes enterprise computing on NT a reality,
thus enabling AS/400 business applications providers to seamlessly benefit from the fast growing NT
market. Oracle's Alliances Design & Migration Services group has worked closely together with
Unibol's development teams to tightly integrate the Internet database, Oracle8i, to the UNIBOL400
product suite. The result is a state-of-the-art execution environment on Windows NT for AS/400
business solutions.
The UNIBOL400 on Oracle solution suite provides the reliability, manageability, security, scalability
and performance expected in the AS/400 world. Furthermore, AS/400 applications providers using
UNIBOL400 On Oracle can now think about adding new high value functionality such as data
analysis, fail-over support and Web access to their solutions.
''Under this partnership agreement, Oracle will also deliver technical assistance to AS/400 ISVs to
facilitate the migration, ensure highest performance and customer satisfaction,'' states Olivier Cabot,
Director Oracle Design & Migration Services.
Stephen A. Hafer, President and CEO of UniComp, said, ''Our combined technologies provide a
clear business advantage for AS/400 ISVs who need to address the market for enterprise class
solutions on Windows NT today with proven applications which address real business needs.''
For more information on the Enable NT Partner Programme, visit the Unibol web site at
unibol.com or the Oracle web site at alliance.oracle.com
References:
(1) AS/400 and E-Business: Where Does This Road Lead? - GartnerGroup AS/400
Business Strategies: 1998 and Beyond Conference Presentation (June, 1998)
(2) AS/400's Fate Is in the Hands of ISVs - GartnerGroup (October, 1998)
Oracle Corporation is the world's leading supplier of software for information management, and the
world's second largest independent software company. With annual revenues of more than $8
billion, the company offers its database, application server, tools and application products, along
with related consulting, education and support services in more than 140 countries around the world.
For more information about Oracle, please call 650/506-7000. Oracle's World Wide Web address
is (URL) oracle.com. |
