Agilysys today announces the grand opening of its IBM Business Partner Innovation Center (BPIC) located at Five Penn Plaza in Midtown Manhattan. This new center represents a multimillion dollar investment in driving innovation, not only in New York City but also nationally. A wide range of clients, business partners and IBM executives are expected to attend the debut of Manhattan's newest information technology facility, which is designed to foster technical innovation for Agilysys clients in key areas such as storage virtualization, systems management, optimization, business continuity and disaster recovery, information lifecycle management, infrastructure simplification, server consolidation and migration. This grand opening also represents a significant investment by Cleveland- based Agilysys as part of IBM's select Business Partner Innovation Center initiative. During the last year, IBM has invested more than $150 million in its own Innovation Centers as well as select Innovation Centers such as the Agilysys BPIC. With acceptance into the BPIC initiative, Agilysys joins exclusive IBM business partner status as less than one-tenth of one percent of IBM's business partners worldwide qualify to own and to operate a BPIC. Acceptance into this program also means Agilysys can leverage IBM's investments with investments of their own because they have demonstrated the required degree of specialization to develop unique industry solutions to help clients become more innovative, flexible and responsive to market demands. "Agilysys is proud to be recognized as a technology leader alongside IBM for on demand business solutions," said Bob Bailey, executive vice president, Agilysys, Inc. "The Agilysys Innovation Center serves as a point-of- differentiation between us and our competition and allows us to emulate our clients' enterprises on the latest IBM eServer, Storage and software product offerings." The Agilysys facility's purpose is two-fold: to replicate a client's environment while serving as a center for sales and technical training and to educate clients. Within the Agilysys Innovation Center, a conference room is available for training purposes and further discussion of customer requirements. The Agilysys Innovation Center for on demand business showcases both solutions and services based on IBM product and related technologies to meet customer's technology needs. It contains the latest in IBM TotalStorage Solutions, IBM eServer iSeries, pSeries and xSeries brand products. All of these technologies are proudly displayed in a glass-enclosed, temperature- controlled, showcase data center. In addition to a wide array of IBM hardware products on display, IBM software brands are also represented including: Lotus, DB2, WebSphere, Tivoli, Rational and the IBM Express family of offerings. The Agilysys technical support team managing the facility are highly certified in select solution specializations. "Agilysys is among our premier business partners and we are encouraged by their commitment to innovation that matters for clients right here in the New York area and beyond," said Donn Atkins, General Manager of IBM Global Business Partners. "It takes talent, dedication and capital as well as an eye toward the future to establish a Business Partner Innovation Center. Agilysys is demonstrating what On Demand technology can do for companies in context of their own business." Current customer Bob Venable, manager of enterprise system for BlueCross BlueShield for the Tennessee Blues Plan, will attend today's grand opening and plans to utilize the center. He says, "It's critical to BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee that Agilysys has deep technical skills and their Innovation Center demonstrates their commitment to being 'best in class' in offering customer support. I'm looking forward to the benefits provided by this new facility such as environment simulation, piloting and benchmarking new products." A ceremonial ribbon-cutting will occur at 3:30 p.m. today at the newly built Agilysys Innovation Center to officially open the facility and introduce it to current and prospective customers.