INDUSTRY

SOMERS, NY -- IBM today launched a secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) for developers to provide remote worldwide access to its Solution Partnership Centers (SPCs). The new service will allow Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to utilize the SPCs remotely, reducing costs by thousands of dollars and software development by several weeks. The service is the result of IBM's collaboration with Citrix, Nortel Networks, and Tarantella. Developers will be able to access IBM's centers remotely from within their own offices, eliminating travel costs, benefiting from the expertise of top engineers, and increasing the number of products tested. In using remote access during porting and testing, ISVs will also gain valuable insight into how their applications perform over the Internet. The VPN service will support porting and testing exercises using Linux, Windows, Macintosh and Solaris remote clients, underscoring IBM's commitment to open standards and cross-platform computing. "We anticipate that a great many developers will use our secure VPN access to cut costs and speed up their software development," explained Susan K. Shuck, Director, PartnerWorld for Developers, IBM Developer Relations. "We've invested in secure VPN access due to feedback from our Business Partners regarding their requirements." "We are very impressed with the capabilities that the SPC VPN service provides," stated Shoeb Javed, Chief Technology Officer at Vesta Broadband Services Inc, located in McKinney, Texas. "Within a few days of our request, we had secure and full graphical access to our porting and testing an xSeries server with Linux, WebSphere* and DB2*, in the San Mateo SPC, while keeping our key technical resources in McKinney, Texas. We intend to participate in IBM's xSP Prime Program with our NetMovies (TM) suite of IP based broadband services platform running on Websphere and DB2. This capability has made it possible for my team to perform quickly and has reduced my costs to participate in these programs." A significant improvement over IBM's current iNet Porting service, the VPN solution provides strong encryption for data communications and is designed to cooperate with existing firewall infrastructures at the developer's location. Developers will be able to test a greater variety of applications through keyboard, video, mouse and remote graphical console access software. In addition to working on-site at SPC locations, developers can now also remotely access both traditional terminal and graphical interface applications. Previously, developers had to either work on-site with Graphical User Interface (GUI) applications or use terminal emulators for porting and testing. The service utilizes either the Citrix Extranet VPN or Nortel Networks Contivity** VPN Switch to provide encrypted communications to the SPCs. Tarantella Enterprise 3 is used as a GUI application extender supporting graphical access to Linux, AIX, OS/400 and OS/390 platforms. Since the initial announcement of iNet Porting in December 1995, the SPCs have been a leader in helping ISVs test with AIX and other IBM products. IBM has expanded this offering of remote porting and testing capabilities to IBM eServers* iSeries*, pSeries*, xSeries*, zSeries* and for IBM middleware including DB2 Universal Database, Lotus*, and WebSphere. The new secure VPN is available now at selected SPCs and offered as part of the SPC remote testing service, expanding the reach of SPC locations worldwide. For more information on how to get started, ISVs can complete a remote enablement form available on the SPC Web site www.developer.ibm.com/spc About the IBM Solution Partnership Centers Open industry standards and multi-platform environments continue to present new development challenges. Whether a customer request to ensure that an application runs on the latest IBM platform or Linux, or the desire to increase marketshare by targeting Windows NT based customers, the 16 worldwide SPCs provide the latest hardware and software for testing new applications. IBM teams of technical consultants are available to work with software developers to resolve a variety of technical challenges. The wide variety of hardware, middleware, and tools offered by the SPCs for desktop, midrange and large system environments are simply too expensive for most development shops to keep on hand for testing purposes, yet at the same time they are critical to ensure product performance. The SPC resources are available exclusively to members of PartnerWorld for Developers, the developer resource for IBM Business Partners. It offers developers the industry's richest, deepest technical and marketing support resources available. PartnerWorld for Developers can help Business Partners reach broader business opportunities, lower development costs and get products to market faster. For more information, or to join, visit www.developer.ibm.com For more information visit www.ibm.com/software