Swindon — 15 November 2004 — According to Intel Corp. and Microsoft Corp. today, Windows® Server™ 2003 and SQL Server 2000 with Itanium®-based systems, is the leading platform with the highest scalability for mission-critical business applications being migrated from expensive, proprietary RISC-based UNIX servers. An increasing number of organisations in Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) are adopting Microsoft® and Intel® technology to replace their UNIX-based solutions or integrate with their UNIX-based enterprises. These include: Alfa Bank, 8el.com, Ementor ASA, Mappy SA, Panasonic Germany, SG Weber and Vattenfall.

With the introduction of the Intel Itanium 2 processor with 9M of cache — Intel is delivering a significant price and performance boost for transaction processing, data warehousing, business intelligence, enterprise resource planning and high-performance computing. The Intel Itanium platform is Intel’s highest performing, most reliable and scalable platform for enterprise and technical computing — offering value and choice over proprietary RISC. “Itanium processor-based servers running on Windows Server System are a cost-effective, open, standards-based solution,” said Tom Garrison, head of enterprise marketing, Intel EMEA. “Itanium architecture offers outstanding performance, RAS and choice for business-critical enterprise and RISC replacement.”

“Organisations that have heavily invested in UNIX-based solutions can potentially save significant expense by moving toward technologies from Microsoft and other leaders in the IT industry,” said Mauro Meanti, general manager of the Server and Tools Business Group at Microsoft EMEA. “Our customers recognise that migrating their existing applications to the Windows platform and Windows Server System products running on the Intel Itanium 2 platform is a powerful and versatile solution that cannot be surpassed in long-term value and flexibility.”



High Performance, Low Costs Available with Windows Solution

SG Weber is one of the world’s leading industrial companies, manufacturing and selling a range of mortar-based solutions. With rising competitive pressures in the construction industry, the company was looking to streamline administration processes, rationalise IT operations and improve interoperability between their systems. The decision to rationalise operations gave SG Weber a welcome opportunity to break the lock-in effect with the UNIX operating system in use at the time. “‘The decision to migrate to Windows 2000 and SQL Server 2000 was prompted first and foremost by cost considerations. The Microsoft suite gave us the opportunity to reduce the platform costs for our SAP deployment by over 30 per cent,” said Philippe Marsy, chief information officer, SG Weber. In addition to cost savings, other compelling benefits of the new system are its interoperability, scalability and flexibility. “We had some communications difficulties with the old platform,” said Marsy. “With Microsoft, we can say goodbye to all interoperability problems.”

Another organisation that is consolidating and standardising its technology on the Microsoft platform is Ementor, one of the largest IT solution companies in the Nordic region. As a result of nearly 90 acquisitions over the last few years, Ementor was running over 150 business applications. The company felt that the Microsoft environment would offer availability, scalability and good price for performance for their enterprise applications. “We feel that SQL Server 2000 (64-bit) is a mature, trustworthy, enterprise-ready product that will deliver the levels of availability we need for our business-critical solutions at unbeatable price/performance,” said Magne Solberg, chief information officer, Ementor Group.



Reliability Key For Alfa Bank in Migration

Alfa Bank, one of the top-five banking and financial organisations in Russia, successfully integrated an Intel Itanium 2-based hardware platform, which has allowed the company to help eliminate problems that emerged with requirements imposed by the bank on its critical financial applications. Speaking about the experience of implementation of Intel Itanium 2-based servers, Serghey Mednov, IT director, Alfa Bank, said,”We have had a positive experience with Intel Itanium2 based solutions for our mission-critical banking systems. Based on our experience for the past 12 months we have seen a high level of reliability and effectiveness with the solutions. More than five of our mission-critical banking systems run on the Intel Itanium2 platform, based on 64-bit OS Microsoft and Microsoft SQL 2000 for a database management system.” According to Mednov, Alfa Bank has been able to standardise its applications on the Microsoft SQL platform and had the opportunity to scale its systems up to 128 CPUs, in one server, based on the 64-bit Intel Itanium 2 architecture. Additionally, Alfa Bank is experiencing a reliability level in their solutions that was previously only available with RISC-based systems. "We have used Intel Itanium 2-based servers for critical tasks, and we assess this solution as highly reliable and effective. As compared to standard 32-bit platform-based solutions, the cost/performance ratio is almost two-times better. Today, we regard Intel Itanium 2 architecture as the base for the further equipping of the bank and consolidation of its computing resources."



Tools and Services for Migrating to Windows

For companies that are looking for alternatives to UNIX-based solutions, Intel and Microsoft are collaborating with technology and services leaders such as Unisys Corp., Bull and HP, and jointly offering a comprehensive set of Windows- and Intel-based integration and migration solutions.

Microsoft provides a clear roadmap and guidance for reducing the complexity and time involved in migrating applications from UNIX-based solutions to Windows. Microsoft offers Windows Services For UNIX (SFU) 3.5, a set of services, solutions, training and technical information enabling enterprises to move enterprise applications from UNIX to the Windows Server System quickly, and without disruption to the business. This set of cross-platform network services from Microsoft that provides interoperability between Windows and UNIX-based environments. Available to customers at no charge, SFU 3.5 offers customers enhanced performance of cross-platform tools and services, enhanced UNIX command-line administration capabilities, and the ability to extend UNIX-based applications in a web services environment based on Microsoft .NET™.