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I received this from my manager, I assume it's the press release:
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Linda Pugliano
Digital Equipment Corporation
(508) 486-6617
GENERAL DATACOMM AND DIGITAL TEAM TO SELL ATM NETWORKS
Leading WAN and LAN Vendors Partner to Provide
End-to-End ATM Solutions
MIDDLEBURY, CT -- March 20, 1995 -- General DataComm, Inc. (NYSE-GDC)
and Digital Equipment Corporation today announced a comprehensive
sales, marketing and technical agreement to offer customers integrated
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networking solutions. Highlighted in
the agreement is a joint sales and marketing program to target network
integrators focused on delivering innovative ATM solutions for
federal, education, and financial markets. The companies have also
agreed to exchange key technologies with a goal of accelerating the
deployment of ATM solutions.
The worldwide collaboration combines GDC's strengths in wide area
networking (WAN) with Digital's expertise in local area networking
(LAN) to offer complete end-to-end ATM solutions. By combining their
expertise, the companies will help ease customers' migration to ATM
technology and facilitate deployment of such leading edge solutions as
telemedicine and distance learning.
In addition to providing access to new technology, the joint solutions
make it easy to build on customers' investments in existing
networks. For example, customers will be able to integrate existing
LANs into the ATM WAN environment and integrate desktop data with
voice and video services into the enterprise ATM backbone. Working
together, the companies will provide high-bandwidth networking for a
campus, from campus to campus, and from a campus to a remote location.
Multiple WAN services (Frame Relay, T1/E1, T3/E3, ATM) will also be
integrated efficiently across an ATM WAN.
TECHNOLOGY EXCHANGE WILL ACCELERATE DEPLOYMENT OF ATM SOLUTIONS
The companies will share technology in a number of key areas to help
speed deployment of production ATM solutions. Specifically, they will
work together on technologies such as the GDC-developed ATM Frame UNI
(User Network Interface) and Digital-developed FDDI (Fiber Distributed
Data Interface). GDC and Digital will jointly study the interaction of
LAN-based congestion management with ABR-based (Available Bit Rate) wide
area congestion management. To this end, Digital will also grant a
royalty free license to GDC for its congestion avoidance patent and
flow-control technology.
In addition, the agreement provides for extensive interoperability testing
to ensure the total ATM solutions provide excellent performance and
reliability. Specific areas of testing include network to network
interface, switched virtual circuits, and network management.
- more -
"We believe this partnership holds tremendous benefits to our
customers," said Michael C. Thurk, senior vice president of marketing
for GDC. "By combining our expertise, General DataComm and Digital
will provide end-users easy connectivity across an entire organization
through our leading edge technology implementations. Specifically,
our combined strength will help ensure even higher performance and
stability with data traffic."
"Early implementers of ATM technology tell us they want ATM network
products that interoperate today -- they can't wait for standards to
mature fully," said William Maro, vice president of product marketing
and engineering for Digital's Network Product Business. "The close
collaboration between Digital and General DataComm meets this need by
providing customers with truly world-class ATM solutions."
SOLUTIONS FEATURE GDC APEX ATM SWITCH AND DIGITAL'S NETWORK PRODUCTS
The collaboration leverages the unique strengths of GDC's APEX ATM
switches and Digital's DEChub family, GIGAswitch/ATM switching system
and ATMworks family of network interface adapters to provide complete
customer solutions. GDC's APEX ATM switch supports data, voice and
video traffic and provides easy access to a private or public wide
area ATM network. GDC APEX is a fully scalable system that can easily
-- and cost effectively -- be upgraded to accommodate incremental
network growth. The GDC ATM product family has an open network
management system that provides carriers and commercial users with a
highly reliable network. Along with Digital's GIGAswitch/ATM switch,
the GDC APEX ATM switch is one of the few switches available to support
switched virtual circuits (SVCs), based on the ATM Forum UNI
version 3.0 (Q2931).
Digital's ATM products have implemented LAN ATM standards such as UNI
3.0, Q.2931, ILMI, IISP, and Classical IP (RFC1577). Digital will
continue to add value to these standards and implement new standards
as they emerge from the ATM Forum. Ideally suited for use in LAN
backbones and high-performance workgroups, Digital's GIGAswitch/ATM
switching system provides outstanding network stability by being the
only switch in the industry to offer FLOWmaster flow control. FLOWmaster
technology, in conjunction with Digital's low latency switch design,
maximizes network performance and stability for bursty data traffic. The
ATMworks family is specifically designed to increase host performance.
Digital Equipment Corporation is the world's leader in open
client/server solutions from personal computing to integrated worldwide
information systems. Digital's scalable Alpha platforms, storage,
networking, software and services, together with industry-focused solutions
from business partners, help organizations compete and win in today's global
marketplace.
General DataComm is the leader in providing real business solutions for
enterprise and telecommunications networks based on ATM products and
services. Its extensive product line includes the APEX family of ATM
switches, LAN internetworking products, multiplexers, digital data sets and
high-speed dial-up modems. Based in Middlebury, Connecticut, GDC provides
communications solutions worldwide.
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Note to Editors: Digital, the Digital logo, GIGAswitch, and ATMworks
are trademarks of Digital Equipment Corporation.
CORP/95/848
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