CA's Unicenter TNG to manage mission-critical resources

CA software provides applications management infrastructure for major international banking group; enables cost-effective end-to-end monitoring of diverse IT environment

ISLANDIA, N.Y., 4 July 2000 -- Computer Associates International, Inc. (CA), a eBusiness solutions provider, announced on the June, 21st that ABN AMRO North America, Inc., one of the foreign bank groups in the U.S., has deployed CA's Unicenter TNG to monitor its vast North American IT enterprise and build a comprehensive applications administration structure that maximizes the bank's existing investments in information technology.

Unicenter TNG will provide a standardized management approach that allows the organization to control heterogeneous systems and leverage existing applications integrated throughout its international environment. CA technology will also help control costs and improve the productivity of in-house technical support teams by eliminating and consolidating redundant IT management products.

"Unicenter TNG will serve as a critical 'umbrella' for all management resources, providing a cohesive view of our complex multi-platform environment while allowing us to take advantage of integrated toolsets that are already in place," said Ray Oral, ABN AMRO senior vice president.

The need to bring a greater number of client applications in-house under the management of ABN AMRO's IT Services Departments was another primary reason for the selection of Unicenter TNG.

"It was imperative that we be able to continue supporting more and more applications without proportionally driving up our software and personnel costs," said Greg Balin, ABN AMRO assistant vice president. "We saw Unicenter TNG as a functional solution for leveraging key technologies, helping expand our capabilities while keeping costs relatively constant."

With Unicenter TNG, ABN AMRO is able to monitor nearly 1,400 servers forming the backbone of its mission-critical heterogeneous computing environment. The distributed ABN AMRO infrastructure incorporates UNIX, AS/400, Windows NT, Novell and Tandem technologies, as well as OS/390.

Unicenter TNG will be used to manage ABN AMRO's cross platform database technology, as well as crucial mortgage processing, wire transfer and other in-house banking applications. "Our applications deal with billions of dollars on a daily basis, so it's very important that they are well monitored and managed," said Bob Mathes, ABN AMRO senior vice president.

In addition, Unicenter TNG will play an important role within ABN AMRO's management lifecycle process - a methodology for managing critical applications and computing environments throughout the enterprise. The process allows management to identify and implement procedures that improve operational tasks, making it easier for personnel to manage systems within their respective areas of authority.

The Business Process Views (BPV) feature of Unicenter TNG will make it possible for the operations staff to gain a logical perspective of each application under scrutiny. It will then be able to determine which staff members "own" specific areas, and establish predetermined responses to virtually any type of alert, automatically generating help desk tickets and sending notifications to the appropriate administrator via page.

As ABN AMRO's eCommerce efforts grow in scope, Balin believes the reach of Unicenter TNG will be continually expanded. ABN AMRO has begun using the Web Management Option (WMO) of Unicenter TNG to monitor its internal Web servers, and plans call for the solution to control critical eBusiness platforms and applications as ABN AMRO makes a greater number of its services available to clients via the Internet.

"Because it is cross-platform, Unicenter TNG is a logical solution to help us deliver eCommece services," said Balin. "It also provides the consolidated metrics and availability reporting so important within the realm of eBusiness. We plan on taking Unicenter TNG management all the way across the enterprise, and that would clearly involve the IT platforms and applications associated with our eBusiness environment."

About Computer Associates International Inc.
Computer Associates International, Inc. , a business software company that delivers the end-to-end infrastructure to enable eBusiness through innovative technology, services and education. For more information, visit www.ca.com

About ABN AMRO BANK N.V.
Netherlands-based ABN AMRO Bank N.V. is the world's sixth largest bank with total assets of $480 billion and more than 3,500 locations in 76 countries and territories. In North America, ABN AMRO is headquartered in Chicago and has $162 billion in assets and more than 18,000 employees with banking offices in 15 cities in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.