F O R    I M M E D I A T E    R E L E A S E

Sequent and FacetCorp Establish Strategic Alliance

Partnership Delivers Key Piece of Sequent NUMACenter Windows-to-UNIX Integration Solution

10 November 1998
BEAVERTON, Oregon and PLANO, Texas - Sequent Computer Systems, Inc. and FacetCorp announced a strategic relationship through which FacetCorp will provide important NT-to-UNIX integration technology to Sequent's NUMACenter™ framework. As part of the agreement, Sequent will sell and support the FacetWin® product.

Sequent’s NUMACenter environment allows customers to roll-out applications utilizing Windows NT and other Microsoft technologies, while leveraging the scalabilty, availability and performance available today on a UNIX database server. In addition to FacetWin’s integration capabilities, Sequent’s NUMACenter offering includes server hardware integration, storage integration, single view systems management and customer and professional services.

FacetCorp's FacetWin software provides Sequent customers with an all-in-one feature set that allows users of Windows PCs to transparently access and use the UNIX network resources (such as files, disks, Windows applications, and printers). FacetWin features include file services, print services, 32-bit terminal emulation, and a graphical administration interface that provides a single point of administration for all FacetWin servers on the network, as well as a POP3 email server.

"The FacetCorp partnership is a great fit for Sequent. The FacetWin product delivers an excellent set of capabilities, including the new Simple Sign-On™ functionality which is something our customers have been asking for," said Jeff Pancottine, Vice President of Global Marketing at Sequent. "Another important factor in this relationship is FacetCorp's shared commitment to customer service and customer satisfaction."

"We are excited about this opportunity to work closely with such an outstanding company as Sequent," said Paul Vance, Vice President and General Manager at FacetCorp. "As the world leader in Intel-based data center servers, Sequent provides their customers with the most scaleable, available, reliable and manageable products. FacetWin is now one of those products."

FacetWin differs from existing connectivity alternatives in several ways. First, FacetCorp based the file and print services in FacetWin upon the Common Internet File System (CIFS) formerly known as SMB. This is the primary system that Microsoft Windows uses for networking PCs. Most other connectivity products use the UNIX-oriented Network File System (NFS) method of loading NFS software on the PC to enable it as a UNIX NFS client. Instead, FacetWin provides a UNIX CIFS server that requires no additional software to be loaded on the PC to get completely transparent file and print services. CIFS was chosen for FacetWin because it is very easy to install and administer (since FacetWin administration can take place from the UNIX server), and because of its good performance. The only part of FacetWin to run on the PC is the terminal emulator and modem pool server, which were designed as native 32-bit applications for Windows 9x or NT 4.0. In creating the terminal emulator, FacetCorp was able to leverage the terminal emulation technology built into FacetTerm® (the company’s award winning multi-session product).