Ensim Launches the Hosting Industry's First Operations Support System [14th July 2003]

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jul 14, 2003 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Ensim(R) Corporation, the global leader in hosting automation software, today announced the immediate availability of Ensim Unify, the hosting industry's first multi-service Operations Support System (OSS). Ensim Unify provides a single infrastructure for provisioning, managing and metering multiple Linux, Unix and Windows-based services. Ensim Unify was jointly developed by Ensim and Microsoft to enable hosting service providers to quickly and easily roll out the next generation of hosted services, including Microsoft Exchange 2003 and ASP.NET Web sites. (See related Microsoft announcement: "Microsoft and Ensim Collaboration Creates Operations Support System (OSS) for Hosting Applications.")

"As the industry expands, hosting service providers will need the same set of multi-service OSS capabilities that have long been in use in other industries," said Joshua Beil, vice president at Tier 1 Research. "Ensim and Microsoft are responding to the market's demand for a flexible industry-standard platform that can economically be extended to support new technologies and services."

"Microsoft is bringing to market exciting and powerful new products with the latest releases of Windows Server and Exchange Server," said Pascal Martin, general manager for Microsoft's Communications and Mobility Solutions Group. "As a result of our close collaborative efforts, the Ensim Unify product will enable the hosting industry to deliver this new generation of software as hosted services."

First Multi-Service Hosting Platform

Ensim Unify is the hosting industry's first OSS platform, offering hosting service providers a single solution for automating service delivery across multiple Linux, Unix and Windows-based services. It also provides a single point of integration for existing business support systems. With Ensim Unify, hosting service providers can use Ensim-developed snap-in software for hosted services, or create and integrate custom-built services using a proven service integration framework. This reduces the complexity, time and cost typically associated with new service development.

First Out-of-the-box Hosting of Exchange 2003 & ASP.NET Web Sites

Ensim Unify is the first hosting platform to offer out-of-the-box support for Microsoft Exchange 2003 and Web sites built on ASP.NET. Ready-to-deploy snap-in software enables hosting service providers to quickly deliver these premium services to broad markets. This allows hosting service providers to extend existing messaging and Web site service offerings to capture new revenue opportunities as they happen.

First Full Support for Wholesale & Retail Distribution of Hosted Services

Ensim Unify is the first platform to fully support wholesale and retail distribution of hosted services, allowing hosting service providers to efficiently reach the broad small business markets. With Ensim Unify, hosting service providers can allocate bulk service resources to their resellers, who in turn can allocate the resources to other resellers. Resellers can flexibly combine and provision resources into targeted service plans for end-customers. Further, Ensim Unify enables complete integration of systems along the supply chain. Resellers can tie their storefront and billing systems into the hoster's Ensim Unify system using Web services interfaces over the Internet.

"We see a lot of opportunities emerging from new hosted services," said Barbara Branaman, director of product marketing at XO Corporation. "We're excited that Microsoft and Ensim are working together to deliver better ways for us to introduce these services to our customers."

"Our industry is growing from simply hosting Web sites to delivering higher value services," said Kanwal Rekhi, president and CEO of Ensim Corporation. "Ensim Unify will deliver the next-generation software infrastructure necessary to rapidly and profitably deliver these services to the market."

Features and Benefits
-- Unified Resource Management: Sophisticated resource management
capabilities allow hosting service providers to centrally register,
classify and allocate all service-related resources. Significantly,
hosting service providers and their resellers can easily provision an
n-tier wholesale channel with bulk service resources, allowing
resellers to flexibly provision these as part of custom service plans.
-- Unified Service Provisioning: Ensim Unify gives hosting service
providers advanced capabilities for provisioning complex service plans
that combine Linux, Unix and Windows services. Ensim Unify's
provisioning engine performs real-time resource checks, maintains
transactional state, manages queues, supports rollbacks and captures
comprehensive audit trails for troubleshooting, shortening turnaround
time and reducing errors.
-- Unified Service Monitoring: With Ensim Unify, hosting service
providers gain comprehensive resource monitoring and server status.
Detailed real-time resource utilization alerts and user action logs
ensure the smooth running of operations.
-- Unified Service Metering: Robust service usage tracking capabilities
enable hosting service providers to centrally capture granular physical
and logical resource usage across services. This enables
profit-maximizing pricing strategies with lower risk of revenue loss or
billing inaccuracies.
-- Centralized Authentication and Authorization: Whether users login
through the graphical user interface or Web services interface, their
credentials are passed to Microsoft Active Directory for authentication
and authorization. This ensures secure, role-based access for hosting
service providers, resellers and end-customers.
-- SOAP/XML Web Services Interfaces: Support for SOAP/XML Web services
interfaces lets hosting service providers rapidly integrate Ensim Unify
with existing business systems. Further, hosting service providers can
extend these programmatic interfaces to resellers. Delivered as plug-
ins for Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, these Web services interfaces can
be used with BizTalk Server or other similar development tools.
-- Multi-tier Self-Management Interfaces: Ensim Unify offers secure,
role-based, self-management capabilities through control panels
optimized for the non-technical user. Leveraging these brandable,
point-and-click interfaces, hosting service providers can delegate all
common service management tasks to their end-customers and distribution
channels.
-- Rapid Service Integration Framework: Ensim Unify makes it easy for
hosting service providers to roll out custom-built services by
leveraging a proven feature-rich development infrastructure that
minimizes the complexities and high costs often associated with service
development.

Product Availability

The Ensim Unify platform and snap-in ASP.NET Web site hosting software are available immediately. The Exchange 2003 snap-in software will be available late in the third quarter of CY 2003. Ensim Unify is sold exclusively through the Ensim sales force.

About Ensim Corporation

Ensim Corporation, the global leader in developing and distributing hosting automation software, is privately held and headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. The Company's products are used worldwide by service providers and their resellers to automate the provisioning and management of Web hosting services. More than half of the top U.S. service providers rely on Ensim to efficiently deliver hosting services to their customers. For more information on our leading hosting management software, please visit our Web site at www.ensim.com, or call 1-877-693-6746 in the United States, or 1-408-745-3300 outside the U.S.

NOTE: Ensim and the Ensim logo are registered trademarks of Ensim Corporation, and WEBppliance is a trademark of Ensim Corporation. All trademarks or registered trademarks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Ensim Corporation

Helen K. Thorvald of Ensim Corporation, +1-408-745-3306, or
hthorvald@ensim.com