REDMOND, Wash., Aug. 25, 1998 — Microsoft Corp. today announced it has acquired Valence Research, Incorporated, a Beaverton, Ore.-based developer of industry-leading TCP/IP load-balancing and fault tolerance software for the Microsoft® Windows NT® operating system. Valence Research’s Convoy Cluster
™
Software has won the Windows NT Magazine Editor’s award as well as the Windows NT Intranet Solutions Expo Best of Show award, and it represents an important new addition to Microsoft’s clustering technology and Internet capabilities.
This award-winning technology will be renamed Microsoft Windows NT Load Balancing Service. This technology brings enhanced scalability and fault tolerance to a range of Windows NT-based products, including outbound SMTP mail service in Microsoft Exchange Server and Microsoft Proxy Server as well as integrated system services, such as Microsoft Internet Information Service, Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol Service and Microsoft Internet Authentication Service. Microsoft Windows NT Load Balancing Service complements the features already provided by the clustering subsystem in Windows NT Server Enterprise Edition. Together, these technologies create a highly flexible and scalable solution for front-to-back high availability in mission-critical environments, including Internet server farms.
“We are excited to extend our clustering capabilities with this acquisition so that many more Microsoft customers can benefit from this technology,”
said Jim Allchin, senior vice president of the personal and business systems group at Microsoft.
“Microsoft is also pleased to add key personnel from Valence Research to the Microsoft Windows NT Server team.”
“Microsoft and Valence Research share the same vision of providing our customers with unparalleled levels of scalability and high availability through clustering technology,”
said Dr. William L. Bain, co-founder and CEO of Valence Research.
“We’re very pleased that, as part of Microsoft product offerings, our technology will now benefit a much wider group of customers.”
Already a key component of Microsoft’s online infrastructure, Microsoft Windows NT Load Balancing Service is deployed on such sites as microsoft.com and MSN.com, a group of sites representing some of the highest-volume traffic on the Internet. A stable and proven technology, it has enabled microsoft.com to achieve service availability levels above 99 percent. Microsoft Windows NT Load Balancing Service is also compatible with Internet Protocol Security (IPSec), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard for end-to-end security at the network layer, reinforcing Microsoft’s commitment to standards-based security initiatives.
The Valence Research, Inc. technology, Convoy Cluster Software, is available today. Additional details and technical information can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/ntserverenterprise
/exec/feature/wlbs/default.asp . This technology provides customers using Windows NT Server and Windows NT Server Enterprise Edition with unprecedented levels of scalability and availability to match the ever-increasing demands on Internet and intranet services. Included in this technology is the ability to build Internet Web farms with up to 32 cluster nodes.
Microsoft plans to make the Microsoft Windows NT Load Balancing Service available as a standard component of Windows NT Server Enterprise Edition. Ordering, packaging and
pricing information for Microsoft Windows NT Load Balancing Service will be the subject of a separate announcement later this year.
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“MSFT”
) is the worldwide leader in software for personal computers. The company offers a wide range of products and services for business and personal use, each designed with the mission of making it easier and more enjoyable for people to take advantage of the full power of personal computing every day.
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