IBM Plans Early Shipment of First Set of IBM WorkGroup Functions

SANTA CLARA, CA, April 20, 1995 . . . Today at EMAIL WORLD, IBM announced
May shipment of the first set of integrated IBM WorkGroup functions aimed
at enhancing group communications. This announcement comes ahead of
schedule and represents the industry's first collection of integrated
workgroup services designed to fully exploit client/server technology
through its support of the IBM Open Blueprint for distributed computing.
IBM WorkGroup, announced last fall, is a palette of modular software
functions ranging from e-mail and messaging to document management and
workflow.

The group communications capability will include e-mail, fax, calendar,
directory and agents -- all with a consistent look and feel, common
administration and single log-on. Using this set of functions, a customer
pulling together an international sales meeting, for example, could easily
locate company-wide people and resources, book the meeting on attendees'
calendars, send a multimedia mail message with prep materials, fax a
meeting confirmation, and even have the intelligent agent automatically
issue a reminder message to participants.

        Customers Use What They Have, Add What They Need

IBM WorkGroup supports leading standards and protocols such as VIM, MAPI,
SMTP/MIME, TCP/IP and NETBIOS, giving customers the ability to link in
their current desktop and host software -- protecting technology
investments. IBM WorkGroup is also designed to be modular, so customers
can pick and choose those functions that suit their unique business
needs.

"By nature our university fosters creative freedom. From an information
technology standpoint, this has given rise to a variety of disparate
e-mail, personal productivity and business applications across the
campus," said Art Gloster, Vice Provost for Information Technology at
Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, VA. "Our challenge was to
find a flexible and open solution that could tie it all together. IBM
WorkGroup hit the mark and will bring together our existing technologies
to improve collaboration and provide a customized growth path to our
vision of the virtual campus and education on demand."

                 True Client Server Computing

At the core of IBM WorkGroup is server capability that will provide a
reliable backbone for workgroups to transport all types of information
from e-mail messages to multimedia objects. The IBM WorkGroup server will
utilize fully relational database technology and provide powerful store
and forward capabilities.

"Today's workgroups are looking to build on their productivity tools and
basic e-mail systems," said Steve Mills, general manager, Software
Solutions Division. "They require technologies that tie teams together
across the enterprise, map to the natural flow of work, and provide a
reliable infrastructure to support critical business decisions. IBM
WorkGroup is designed to address these issues -- giving teams the tools
they need to focus less on technology and more on winning in the
marketplace."

                   Pricing and Availability

The integrated group communications functions of IBM WorkGroup will be
generally available May 26 for $95.00 per user. OS/2 servers will be
supported initially with plans to add OS/400, AIX and MVS support. Initial
clients will include OS/2 and Windows with plans to add Macintosh and UNIX
clients.

Integrated workflow and information management functions will be added to
IBM WorkGroup in the second half of 1995. Also in the second half of the
year, IBM Message Queuing Series (IBM MQSeries) will be integrated --
expanding IBM WorkGroup's platform and protocol support and providing a
robust messaging backbone for workflow and business transactions.

IBM WorkGroup is consistent with the IBM Open Blueprint, which is the
market-leading approach for open, distributed computing. Since it
incorporates a range of standards, the Open Blueprint offers the best
assurance that businesses can build, run, and manage distributed
applications in a diverse multivendor world.

Based in Somers, N.Y., IBM's Software Solutions Division provides data
management, application development and workgroup solutions for
mission-critical applications on PCs, workstations, LANs and host
systems.

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