GAMING

Aprisma Management Technologies, Inc., a Gores Technology Group Company, today announced that Berlin University FHTW has deployed Aprisma's SPECTRUM Integrity to guarantee the performance and reliability of its network and communications infrastructure that connects 9,000 students and 1,000 professors and staff across five campuses in Berlin, Germany. Key applications include video conferencing, online courseware, administration, web hosting, and content management. Berlin University FHTW also uses SPECTRUM in hands-on teacher/student labs and classrooms as part of its curriculum for network and systems management degree programs. "We are leading by example as we instruct the next generation of business professionals, engineers, and computer scientists," said Dr. Thomas Schmidt, Professor and Network Engineer at Berlin University FHTW. "SPECTRUM plays a pivotal role not only by ensuring the performance and reliability of Berlin University FHTW's own distributed IT infrastructure, but as the cornerstone to our teaching curriculum in our classrooms and state-of-the-art labs. SPECTRUM's ease of use greatly enhances our instruction." A Cisco Call Manager voice over IP (VoIP) network, partially implemented in late 2003, will roll out campus-wide in phased approaches over the next several years, with SPECTRUM playing a key role in the assessment, deployment, and on-going maintenance of the IP telephony solution. SPECTRUM manages a campus-wide wireless LAN, as well as broadband and dial-up VPN and Internet access services across all academic and residential buildings. SPECTRUM additionally monitors several thousand Dell, HP, and Sun Microsystems desktops and servers, connected by hundreds of switches and routers from Cisco, 3Com, and Enterasys over a switched Gigabit Ethernet backbone. Dr. Schmidt and his IT operations team value the at-a-glance views, and ability to quickly and easily discover and configure new devices as they are added to the infrastructure. "In a university setting, we are constantly handling large numbers of moves, adds and changes to support our mobile student population," he explained. "SPECTRUM takes the guesswork out of configuring and reconfiguring devices, increasing our flexibility, responsiveness and productivity by more than 40%." SPECTRUM Alarm Notification Manager has proven to be a valuable time- saving solution to Berlin University FHTW's operations team on more than one occasion. In one instance, a particular technical specialist was out of the office when a critical impact error happened. Using SPECTRUM remotely from home, Dr. Schmidt pinpointed the cause of the problem and within minutes was able to restore services. SPECTRUM Report Manager helps the operations team easily justify Berlin University FHTW's investment in SPECTRUM, with concise reports on asset, availability and performance metrics that show the university's administration exactly where the network is helping or holding it back. Dr. Schmidt applauds Aprisma's technological vision. "SPECTRUM's object- oriented software architecture and visualization are far superior to the competition." He continued, "SPECTRUM has enabled our small team to do more with less by effectively managing our distributed environment from a central location. Starting in 2006 through 2009, Berlin University FHTW plans to significantly expand the size of our campuses and consequently the scope of our network resources. We're very confident SPECTRUM can scale with us to accommodate these increased demands."