REDMOND, Wash., June 20, 2001 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that Dell Computer Corp. is the first original equipment manufacturer (OEM) to preinstall Microsoft® Application Center 2000 as part of the Microsoft OEM program. In response to customer demand for solutions and to facilitate cooperation between Microsoft’s and Dell’s account managers, Dell will factory-preinstall Microsoft Application Center 2000 on several models of Dell’s PowerEdge and PowerApp Web servers.
Application Center 2000, part of the Microsoft .NET Enterprise Server family, is the deployment and management tool for high-availability Web applications built on the Windows® 2000 operating system. It enables these applications to achieve on-demand scalability and mission-critical availability through software scaling, while reducing operational complexity and costs. Application Center 2000 facilitates scaling out — the use of multiple economical servers for a single purpose — by making it as simple to manage clusters of servers as it is to manage a single machine.
The decision by Dell to preinstall Application Center 2000 is another important milestone in Microsoft’s effort to deliver great out-of-the-box value to customers with its partners. Customers appreciate software preinstallation by OEMs because it provides them with a one-stop shopping option for hardware and software purchases as well as for product support.
“The integration between Microsoft .NET Enterprise Server software and Dell’s enterprise servers is an unbeatable combination,”
said Russ Holt, vice president and general manager of Dell’s Enterprise Systems Group.
“Through our unique build-to-order model, enterprise customers will get the hardware and software they need quickly and efficiently.”
In addition to the savings that result from having Windows 2000 Server and Application Center 2000 preinstalled, customers benefit from having rigorously tested and preconfigured server systems that offer best-of-breed reliability.
As the first .NET Enterprise Server product shipped by a major OEM, Application Center 2000 is particularly well-suited for preinstallation. Application Center 2000 provides customers with increased business agility, enabling scale-out within hours instead of days. With Application Center 2000 preinstalled on a server, customers can simply run a short wizard to add the server to an existing Application Center 2000 cluster and instantly boost capacity, or to quickly build a new cluster from scratch. In addition, Application Center 2000 allows customers to quickly redeploy their server assets as requirements change.
“Dell’s decision to preinstall Application Center 2000 on its PowerEdge servers presents great value to our customers by further reducing the time between purchase and deployment,”
said Paul Flessner, senior vice president of the .NET Enterprise Server Group at Microsoft.
“The scale-out model enables virtually bulletproof application availability, and Dell and Microsoft have made the process of implementing a scaled-out solution even easier by providing a unified hardware and software resource for enterprise customers.”
More information about Microsoft Application Center 2000 on Dell servers can be found at http://www.dell.com/applicationcenter/ . Information on Application Center 2000 and all the Microsoft .NET Enterprise Servers can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/applicationcenter/ .
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