Press release:

PRESS RELEASE

University of Bern and ifolor opt for highly scalable servers with Cisco UCS

• Cisco already has more than 200 UCS customers in Switzerland • UCS servers provision resources quickly and flexibly • Centralized management reduces overall operating costs

Switzerland, August 10th 2012 – An increasing number of companies are turning to Cisco Unified Computing System™ (Cisco UCS®) servers. Launched two years ago, Cisco UCS now has more than 11,000 customers worldwide. At the end of last year, Cisco secured Kreuzlingen-based photography and print service provider ifolor as its 100th UCS customer in Switzerland and named the University of Bern as its 150th UCS customer soon afterward, at the beginning of March this year. Since then, the total number of Cisco UCS customers in Switzerland has reached more than 200.

University of Bern benefits from centralized management

The University of Bern relies on Cisco UCS servers to handle rapidly growing data volumes. The servers were installed within three days, with assistance from Netcloud, a Cisco Gold Certified Partner, and offer the following advantages:

• Quick installation and intuitive control with no training costs
• Optimized operating costs due to simplified administration
• Scientific projects accelerated through centralized management

Using Cisco UCS, 124 virtual machines on six physical servers store data from the university's 40 institutes and research groups. The virtual machines provide 18 terabytes (TB) of storage space and 1.5 TB of memory. All of the system's components are coordinated with virtualization solutions from VMware and storage from Hitachi Data Systems. Simon Stähelin, virtualization manager at the University of Bern, praises the solution: "System operation is absolutely reliable, and it runs faster than our previous solutions. We're particularly impressed with the centralized management, which significantly simplifies administration."

ifolor handles large volumes of data with Cisco UCS

Customers of ifolor AG deliver the majority of their photos in digital format, which results in large and highly fluctuating volumes of data. Thanks to the Cisco solution, ifolor now has an efficient and stable infrastructure offering the following benefits:

• Flexible capacity scaling for seasonal peaks
• Online ordering services available at all times
• Images processed and stored quickly

ifolor utilizes two redundant Cisco UCS domains in two separate data centers. Each domain contains six Cisco UCS B230 M2 Blade servers with a total of 24 CPUs. The Cisco UCS servers enable the maximum possible stability for the network. Together with storage and data management from NetApp and virtualization solutions from VMware, they make up the FlexPod data center solution. The solution impressed Patrick Sontheim, head of infrastructure at ifolor AG: "The FlexPod architecture provides top performance and scaling with simple management. It allows images to be processed and stored quickly, and the online ordering service is available at all times," Christian Kupferschmid, CIO at ifolor, remarks and adds: "There were no problems with integration and we are still very satisfied with our decision for CISCO UCS."

Please click here for Cisco UCS pictures.

About Cisco

Cisco is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news please go tohttp://newsroom.cisco.com. Cisco equipment in Europe is provided by Cisco Systems International B.V. and Cisco International Limited, wholly owned subsidiaries of Cisco Systems, Inc.

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Premiere Global Sports Deploys Symantec Solutions to Secure and Back Up Virtual Systems

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Premiere Global Sports Deploys Symantec Solutions to Secure and Back Up Virtual Systems

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. – March 27, 2012 – Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced that Premiere Global Sports, a provider of specialized sports travel and hospitality products is using Symantec Protection Suite Enterprise Edition and Symantec Backup Exec to centralize protection of the company’s distributed endpoints. While Premiere Global Sports is a small business, the data they produce is growing on an enterprise scale and thus needs the protection of an enterprise-class solution. Since the deployment, Premiere Global Sports can protect, back up, and provide disaster recovery capabilities for its virtualized business systems.

Premiere Global Sports has grown by acquisition over the last decade, and as a result, most of its 75 full-time employees are distributed across the United States. Consequently, all of its endpoints were managed individually with a variety of antivirus products.

“Many of the companies we acquired were flying by the seat of their pants and didn’t have time to focus on IT infrastructure,” said Jason Drake, Premiere Global Sports’ director of infrastructure and security. “We were tasked with choosing expandable platforms that can meet more needs than we have right now.”

Centralizing Endpoint Protection

Based on past positive experiences, Drake selected Symantec Protection Suite Enterprise Edition to centralize protection of its distributed endpoints and to protect multiple independent servers and dozens of Windows endpoints. In addition to endpoint security, the Symantec Protection Suite Enterprise Edition license includes email server security, email and web gateway virtual appliances, and desktop system recovery. The Enterprise Edition will accommodate Premiere Global Sports’ future growth.

“Having Symantec Protection Suite in place—especially with its defense against zero-day threats—definitely makes me feel more at ease,” Drake said. “By leveraging the new security management solution, we can pinpoint security threats and increase the productivity of our security operations.”

Reliable Backup and Recovery for a Virtualized IT Environment

To support Premiere Global Sports’ growing business, Drake and his team chose Symantec Backup Exec to reduce downtime and ensure critical information on both their virtual and physical systems is always protected and restored in seconds.

“Our IT environment is 90 – 95 percent virtualized, and we continue to leverage this technology to reduce costs and the number of physical servers,” said Drake. “We have trusted Backup Exec to backup our data for several years and the transition from a physical server infrastructure to virtual infrastructure didn’t change our choice in a data protection solution.”

Backup Exec simplifies both backup and disaster recovery, allowing Drake to focus on strategic programs. Plus, Premiere Global Sports will soon begin beta testing Backup Exec 2012 as its deduplication features will streamline backup operations even further.

“Based on my testing, Backup Exec gives me the ability to recover both physical and virtual systems in case of a catastrophe,” Drake said. “Symantec’s V-Ray technology embedded in Backup Exec also allows us to easily expand to a virtual environment and feel confident in our decision.”

About Symantec

Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organizations secure and manage their information-driven world. Our software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored. More information is available at www.symantec.com.

Life Care Centers of America Chooses Microsoft for Business Intelligence

Life Care Centers of America Chooses Microsoft for Business Intelligence

Long-term care operator on track to see multimillion-dollar reduction in overtime expenses after bringing together geographically dispersed facilities through Microsoft Business Intelligence.

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REDMOND, Wash. — March 7, 2012 — Life Care Centers of America has announced the successful deployment of a Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) solution in more than 200 skilled nursing facilities nationwide. The long-term care operator selected Microsoft BI to gain deeper insights into its key performance indicators for managers and executives across the organization. In the process of BI deployment, Life Care has experienced a noticeable difference in its operations by providing accurate and timely data. For most of its 40 years, Life Care operated in a decentralized fashion. Fast growth and geographically dispersed locations made this the ideal organizational structure at the time. As the company grew, however, the company realized the need to have consistent, accurate and timely data for in-depth analysis and better decision-making. It soon became clear that the company needed a centralized BI system to fuel continued growth. “Ultimately, it’s all about the care of our residents and, in our previous setup, data was only delivered fast enough for us to make reactive decisions,” said Mark Gooch, director of BI at Life Care. “We felt it was time for a modern, flexible business intelligence system to help support proactive decision-making.” At first, Life Care considered solutions from other vendors. But those options were prohibitively expensive and would have required hiring and training additional IT staff to operate. Instead, the company decided to use Microsoft BI. Based on Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2, Microsoft BI offered a new yet familiar environment for Life Care’s existing IT staff. Managers and executives were also familiar with Microsoft SharePoint 2010, which provided the portal technology for its operational dashboards. The solution went live in 2010 and is now automatically fed by data from financial, clinical and human resource systems. Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services imports, transforms and loads the data into a SQL-based enterprise data warehouse, which is then used to create OLAP cubes for advanced data analytics. Because of the automated nature of Microsoft BI, Life Care has reduced its IT support costs by 90 percent compared with its previous performance improvement system. As a result of the implementation, Life Care managers and executives now have actionable data. Specifically, they have used their new labor analytic capabilities to combat unnecessary overtime expenses. Life Care is on track to see a multimillion-dollar reduction in overtime expenses through improved staffing practices and awareness. “With the data we get from our Microsoft BI solution, we can now identify, measure and act upon potential concerns months faster than we could in the past,” Gooch said. “I’m very excited to see to how our Microsoft BI solution will positively impact the quality of care we provide our residents.” More information on Microsoft Business Intelligence is available at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/bi/default.aspx. Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.