From my Schwab Research:
Compaq Announces High Availability Services for ProLiant Family of Windows NT-Based Systems
BusinessWire, Monday, December 07, 1998 at 09:07
HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 7, 1998--
Unique Partnership with Customers Culminates in Choice
of Uptime Guarantees to Address a Range of
Customers' High Availability Support Needs
Editors' Summary
-- Compaq's expanded services portfolio for Windows NT now ranges
from basic to high availability, further enhancing customers'
ability to deploy Windows NT today in critical computing
environments.
-- Packaged and custom services for ProLiant systems target
availability needs and budgets of small to large enterprises.
Compaq Computer Corporation (NYSE:CPQ) further reinforced its
commitment to driving robust Windows NT operating system-based
solutions into the enterprise, announcing a suite of services, ranging
from basic to high-availability, for its family of ProLiant servers
running the Windows NT Server operating system. Compaq also announced
a pair of uptime guarantees for ProLiant clusters, enabling customers
to select the level of support that suits their availability needs.
Today's news underscores Compaq's confidence in the reliability of its
Intel-based NT cluster technology and storage solutions and the proven
experience, tools, and methodologies of its world-class services
organization, along with channel partners, to help small, medium and
large enterprise customers confidently and safely deploy Windows NT
now in commercial and high-availability computing environments.
Today's news not only addresses the service needs of companies
who are migrating to or integrating Compaq's Windows NT-based servers,
it significantly expands the portfolio of services available to the
large installed base of Compaq ProLiant servers.
New today for Compaq's ProLiant line of Intel-based servers for
Windows NT are:
-- NT System and Cluster Startup and Installation Services - A vital
first step in achieving desired system availability, these
services are designed to help customers introduce Windows
NT-based systems to their enterprise, or move from existing
Windows NT-based systems to clusters.
-- Availability Review - This custom service engagement provides
in-depth analysis of customers' complete environments to identify
risks to optimal availability, determine cost of downtime per
device, and make recommendations to eliminate risk and thereby
reduce the impact of downtime.
-- Availability Partnership - This custom service delivers proactive
support to help customers manage change in their IT environments,
with the goal of maintaining optimum availability levels.
-- RecoverAll - This service provides 100 percent asset recovery for
damaged equipment as a result of disaster, as well as
reimbursement for many other disaster-related expenses.
-- Priority Service Plans (PSP) - Compaq Services is adding Priority
Executive, a new level of support in its popular line of packaged
Priority Service Plans. Priority Executive offers packaged
business-critical hardware and software support services with the
added benefit of normalized warranty. With this additional PSP
package, customers can now choose from five packages with
increasing levels of support plans to meet their desired levels
of hardware and software support, response time, and
availability. These plans include: Priority, Priority 24,
Priority Plus, Priority Premier, and Priority Executive.
PSP services are designed to simplify the purchase of system
support at the point of product purchase and are available for
sale through Compaq's channel partners. The hardware and software
services offered in the PSP packages are also available unbundled
to existing ProLiant customers through Compaq and its channel
partners.
Industry's First Targeted Guarantees
Compaq Services now offers two guarantees to meet the
availability needs and budget requirements of commercial users as well
as business-critical users. For customers whose systems are used
primarily for commercial business, Compaq offers a 99.5 percent uptime
guarantee, or no more than 40 hours of downtime per year. This
guarantee covers the operating system and hardware for eligible
two-node clustered Compaq ProLiant servers running Windows NT Server
operating system. For customers whose ProLiant systems are deployed
for business-critical use, Compaq now offers a 99.9 percent uptime
guarantee (no more than nine hours a year of downtime) for selected
clusters and configurations.
"For more than ten years, Compaq has supported many of the
world's most intensely business-critical systems," said John Rando,
Senior Vice President and Group Executive, Compaq Services. "Compaq's
emphasis on robust, enterprise-class Windows NT-based servers and
storage solutions is backed by the industry's most experienced team of
business-critical consultants and certified engineers. Our advanced
tools and proven methodologies further enable us to deliver services
and guarantees that reflect the real-world needs of our customers."
"Enterprise Customers are choosing Windows NT more and more for
business-critical systems. I am very excited about Compaq's
investments in delivering even greater value to our customers by
providing uptime guarantee services for Windows NT," said Deborah
Willingham, Vice President, Enterprise Customer Unit, Microsoft
Corporation. "As one of the world's largest Microsoft-certified
services organizations, Compaq is totally focused on ensuring that our
joint customers' business requirements are met by the right technology
infrastructure. The 99.9 percent guarantee will enable our enterprise
customers to feel comfortable deploying the Microsoft Platform in
challenging, business-critical environments."
More than a Numbers Game
As businesses increasingly rely on complex technology for
business operations, their systems and computing environments need to
be assessed for availability risks. Compaq's unique, proactive and
holistic approach to high availability involves a partnership and
shared risk with the customer. This approach takes into account the
major areas of a customer's IT environment that can contribute to
downtime -- software, hardware, networks, physical environment,
applications and the customers management processes -- as well as the
steps and procedures customers can take to reduce the risk of
downtime.
"Our customers look beyond the numbers on the guarantee," said
Peter Mercury, Vice President of Customer Services, Compaq Services.
"They rely on us to engage with them throughout the lifecycle to
ensure that their systems are proactively planned, designed,
implemented and managed to maintain the highest desired levels of
availability."
By first performing an Availability Review, Compaq Services helps
customers to identify the risk areas and choose the appropriate
technology and services to ensure that they achieve and maintain the
required availability target. As with Compaq's guarantees for Digital
UNIX and OpenVMS, customers qualify for the Windows NT uptime
guarantees based on system eligibility, their business-critical
service level agreement with Compaq and a commitment to preventive
measures by both parties.
Expertise, Experience, and Superior Technology
Compaq's expertise in high availability computing is based on
twenty-plus years of experience in designing and supporting clustered
system technology on multiple operating systems. As a result, Compaq
has more engineers cross-trained on Digital UNIX, OpenVMS and Windows
NT than any other vendor. Compaq also offers the industry's leading
NonStop operating system, Tandem NSK and a comprehensive set of
products and services that create seamless integration between the
NonStop Himalaya server and Windows NT Server environments. In
addition, over the next year, Compaq will deliver a wide range of
storage services designed to allow customers uninterrupted access to
their mission-critical data.
Compaq's high-availability services, coupled with the
unprecedented level of robustness and scalability of Compaq's ProLiant
servers, Compaq Fibre Channel Storage, system management software and
interconnect options, provide a total solution and unparalleled
coverage for business-critical Windows NT environments.
Expanding Range of Windows NT Products and Services
Today's announcement rounds out Compaq's existing portfolio of
lifecycle services for Windows NT, which includes a full range of
packaged and custom services for Windows NT-based applications such as
Microsoft Exchange. These new services will help customers to
implement or expand deployment of Windows NT in their operating
environments. Compaq also offers backup support services for its
channel partners who deliver Windows NT services to their customers.
Today's announcement further demonstrates the close relationship
between Compaq and Microsoft that includes services, products and
shared technology. For more than a decade, Compaq Services (formerly
Digital Worldwide Services) has provided lifecycle services for
Microsoft technologies, ranging from help desk, to planning and
deploying Windows NT integration and migration and now
business-critical support. As a result of this successful
relationship, Compaq is the only company endorsed by Microsoft as
Worldwide Prime Integrator for Windows NT.
Compaq recently announced increased technology and consulting
support to Microsoft in the development of Windows 2000 (NT 5.0). At
the same time, Compaq and Microsoft unveiled their initiative to
propel the Microsoft Windows NT Server operating system into a premier
role in the enterprise data center. The initiative will continue to
provide customers with the cost-effectiveness and ease-of-use of
Windows NT in addition to the advanced clustering, OLTP scalability
and robustness of Compaq's best data-center technologies.
Availability and Pricing
The new services for Compaq ProLiant NT Servers are available
today, direct from Compaq for large enterprise customers. The services
are sold to small- and medium-enterprise customers through Compaq's
channel partners. Prices are quoted based on customers' system
configurations and support needs.
Compaq's uptime guarantee for Windows NT 4 will be effective in
January 1999. Guarantees are not sold, but are offered free to
qualified business-critical services customers with eligible ProLiant
system clusters. Additional information on high availability services
for Windows NT is available at:
ww1.digital.com or by calling
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