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Boxborough, MA -- NEC Solutions America, a premier provider of integrated solutions for the "Connected Enterprise" in North America, announced today a simplified, high availability email solution designed to solve the problem of unplanned Microsoft Exchange email downtime. As a ubiquitous business function, email systems have become the primary communications medium for many business transactions today. A full 79 percent* of businesses now report that they receive and confirm orders through email. Yet email users are plagued by unplanned email downtime, which can result in productivity losses of $57,000** per year for a 250-person business sustaining just six hours of email downtime. According to research conducted by Market Dynamics***, within organizations that do experience email downtime 81% stated that it would take more than one hour to restore email, with 49% stating that it would take 24 hours or more to restore email. To abate this pervasive problem, NEC Solutions America introduces today its high availability "HA-Exchange Solution" for small to medium enterprises. The "HA-Exchange Solution" will be comprised of an NEC high availability server that is simple to install and maintain, Microsoft's Exchange email software, Symantec AntiVirus software, Microsoft operating system, and a guarantee of server uptime for email availability. Installation and NEC's "Assured Availability" service, which includes planned software maintenance, are included with the solution. Optional professional services make it possible to deploy this solution in any environment. "IDC research data tells us that email downtime has proven itself as a frequent and costly problem across all types of organizations," said Vernon Turner, group vice president, IDC. "A comprehensive solution with guaranteed hardware availability is moving email, and high availability solutions in general, in the direction that corporations need to be effective today." Simplified High Availability Email At the center of its high availability email solution, NEC places the NEC Express5800/320 server series, winner of four "Best of Show" awards since its introduction. The Intel-based server is designed to provide up to 99.999% hardware availability, requiring single software licenses for all Microsoft Windows applications. The server runs the software out-of-the-box, eliminating the need for any software coding. Microsoft Exchange Standard 2000 or Exchange Enterprise Edition 2000 are also included (Exchange 2003 version will be bundled when available), along with the Microsoft Windows 2000 Server or Windows 2003 Server **** operating system. The NEC Assured Availability Services package for the HA-Exchange Solution includes: -- System and Microsoft Exchange installation -- 24x7 hardware and software support -- Quarterly routine check ups as well as urgent updates "As the email user base grows within an organization a guaranteed email server solution moves from a "nice to have" into an absolute imperative. The expense of email downtime is extraordinary and immediately visible on the company's bottom-line," said Mike Mitsch, Senior Marketing Director, NEC Solutions America, Server Division. "The HA-Exchange Solution is designed to remove all concerns regarding unplanned email server downtime and provide an immediate, quantifiable ROI for IT management. The package provides a compelling reason to upgrade to high availability email today." Pricing and Availability The NEC HA-Exchange Solution will be available on September 30, 2003. Pricing will begin at about $35,000 for an Express5800/320Lb high availability server with Microsoft Windows 2000 operating system, Exchange software (5 Client Access License -CALS), Symantec AntiVirus and NEC's Assured Availability Services Package. Pricing is contingent upon the Microsoft Exchange software selected, actual number of email accounts, and level of services required. Further information on the NEC HA-Exchange email solution is available by calling 866-632-3226 or by visiting the company's web site at www.necft.com *Osterman Research, August 2003 **Ferris Research, August 2003 *** Market Dynamics as quoted on CNET, July 2003 ****Currently being qualified by Microsoft for fault tolerant operation. FERRIS RESEARCH Quick Summary NEC High Availability Servers help email administrators minimize server downtime. The servers are mainstream PC servers, except that they have redundant internal components (packaged in modules) in order to guard against system failure, but provide a single-image server configuration. This reduces complexity, server and application licensing costs, and administrative requirements. NEC's High Availability servers are best suited to administrators considering a server cluster solution, or who need to ensure high availability for their email servers. General Industry Relevance The average Exchange user experiences about five hours of email downtime each year. To some extent, work requiring email interaction can be redirected. But time is wasted in many ways, such as: -- Recognizing the email outage, and switching to other tasks -- Communicating via the telephone, with its overhead of "telephone tag" -- Contacting people in person, with its overhead of travel time and social chit-chat On average, perhaps such wastage represents a 50% reduction in productivity. At a typical average hourly cost per worker of $38 per hour, this corresponds to some $95/year per person. For a server with 500 mailboxes, this is about $47,500 annually. These figures ignore other, often greater, but hard to quantify, costs, such as longer business cycles, slower customer and prospect responses, and less timely decision-making. To minimize downtime, email administrators have experimented with various approaches. Some maintain a spare server that can be brought online in case of hardware failure in a primary server. Others have server clusters, which automatically fail over when needed. No solution is perfect, and all require additional cost and support effort. Unfortunately, because of the perceived cost or complexity, most organizations choose not to make plans for system failure, and are unprepared when problems arise. Advantages of NEC's High Availability Exchange Approach The NEC HA-Exchange approach has a number of advantages that may be appealing to system administrators: -- When a hardware problem is detected, the defective hardware is removed from service with virtually no service interruption. -- Service of the faulty hardware can be completed without service interruption and at a time convenient for IT management. -- The system is considerably less complex than traditional cluster-based systems. It can be installed and managed without specialized training. -- Since the system presents a single image, it requires only one licensed copy of the operating system and applications, which cuts down on licensing and support fees, as well as administrative management.