Linux Transforming Business Industry by Industry; IBM Customers PGA Tour and VeriSign Embraces Linux Across an e-business Infrastructure

ARMONK, N.Y., Jan. 22, 2003 -- IBM announced today at LinuxWorld New York that the PGA Tour and nine additional customers are the latest to move to Linux(R) to transform their businesses.

Three years since IBM's public embrace of Linux, customers in every industry are turning to IBM in record numbers to expand their use of Linux across an e-business infrastructure.

PGA Tour will offer unique new applications to golf fans using IBM Linux Virtual Services and Storage. PGA Tour turned to IBM and Linux to launch TOURCast, a first-of-its-kind online application that enables golf fans to follow tournament action in real time or replay through rich graphic and statistical presentations.

"TOURCast will provide the PGA TOUR fan with unprecedented information in a fun, easy-to-use, graphical experience," said Steve Evans, PGA TOUR Vice President of Information Services. "Gone are the days of watching a list of names waiting for a score to change. TOURCast will transport the fans onto the course where they can experience the holes, the shots and the tournament storylines in real-time."

PGA Tour is among the latest of more than 6,300 IBM customer engagements around Linux, more evidence that the open source operating system is changing the way companies do business.

Available exclusively on www.pgatour.com, PGA TOURCast combines on-demand Linux computing power from IBM with existing technology from the PGA ShotLink and Tournament Tracker applications to provide unprecedented access to information about every player, every shot and every hole. The TOURCast application runs on Linux Virtual Services - a powerful, cost effective on demand service hosted by IBM on virtual servers on IBM eServer(TM) zSeries(TM) mainframes and IBM Enterprise Storage Server(TM) systems, allowing PGA TOUR to pay only for the power and capacity required to meet actual consumer demand for TOURCast.

"It is significant that customers from every industry, in virtually every part of the world, turn to IBM to expand their use of Linux and move toward becoming an on demand business," said Jim Stallings, general manager, Linux at IBM. "IBM is uniquely positioned to fulfill our customers' hardware, software, and services needs as they revolutionize their businesses and respond to the demands of a changing marketplace."

Additional customers announced today that have turned to IBM and Linux to transform their businesses:

VeriSign, Inc., the leading provider of digital trust services, is migrating all of its public key infrastructure (PKI) services to the Linux platform. VeriSign already has deployed about two dozen IBM eServer xSeries(TM) 330 servers on the West Coast to support the migration, and it hopes to significantly boost that number by early 2003. "Demand was growing for our PKI services, which meant increased pressure on our technical infrastructure," said Marshall Behling, vice president of business development, VeriSign. "Ramping up to meet that demand was going to be very expensive, so we looked at other options. Linux was a good choice because it's a de facto standard, it's being widely supported and it offered numerous financial and technical advantages for us."

Mercury Insurance Group, one of the leading independent agency writers of automobile insurance and one of the fastest-growing auto insurers in the U.S., is using IBM eServer xSeries Intel(R) processor-based systems running Linux to power its new Java(TM)-based Web portals serving employees and independent agents. Mercury selected IBM because of its ability to provide a complete Linux solution, including software, servers and storage. In addition to IBM's highly scalable eServer x440 Intel processor-based servers, the solution includes IBM FAStT700 storage servers attached to Linux, as well as IBM DB2(R) database, Tivoli(R) management software and WebSphere(R) software platform for e-business. Mercury anticipates that its powerful new Web applications will make it significantly easier to do business with its independent agents and to drive additional business.

Grohe, based in Germany, is a key international player in the design, manufacturing and distribution of water fittings. Grohe has begun an enterprise computing consolidation initiative -- an advanced mobile sales application platform. For this platform, Grohe worked with IBM Business Partner Atos Origin to implement a solution based on mySAP CRM Mobile Sales running DB2 database software for Linux on IBM eServer xSeries.

Banco do Brasil, Brazil's largest bank, with branches in 30 countries, has part of its European IT operations powered by eServer systems running Linux. An IBM eServer iSeries(TM) server running Linux is helping Banco do Brasil bring flexibility and ease of management to its infrastructure. By switching to Linux, the company increased IT capacity, performance and reliability, while the server consolidation generated savings on licensing fees and administration costs. The company anticipates achieving significant reductions in total cost of ownership.

Automatos, Inc.,a leader in IT Management solutions, has selected IBM DB2 Universal Database(TM) for Linux to power its Internet-based automated ITintelligence solutions. Automatos needed a cost-effective, high performance IT infrastructure for its remote monitoring and management offerings that provide completely automated monitoring and reporting of corporate servers, desktops and other hardware in critical IT environments. Automatos migrated from Windows(R) to DB2 and Linux based on price and performance, and was able to implement a low-cost operating environment that created a solid platform to deliver its solutions to customers. Moving from Windows to DB2 and Linux, Automatos was able to protect its hardware investment and continue to take advantage of an operating system that can be maintained remotely.

Germany's Eberspaecher GmbH&Co.KG, one of the world's largest manufacturers of automobile muffler and heating systems, has selected Linux on the IBM eServer zSeries mainframe and IBM Enterprise Storage Server "Shark" for the company's manufacturing and Enterprise Resource Planning applications. Among its applications, Eberspaecher runs SAP R/3 on SuSE Linux Enterprise Server and Linux in a partition on the IBM mainframe to manage some 120 network computers used in its manufacturing operations. The integrated solution between z/OS(TM) and Linux on the IBM mainframe offers Eberspaecher, a leading parts supplier to virtually every European automobile manufacturer, high availability for its 24/7 operations and competitively low systems management costs due to tight integration. The sale was made by IBM Germany Business partner SVA. Eberspaecher has approximately 5,000 employees in 12 countries.

Geo. H. Young & Co. Ltd., a Canadian customs broker based in Winnipeg, has purchased an eServer iSeries that will be dedicated to hosting infrastructure applications running under Linux, including file/print, database, Web serving, firewall and a Java application server. GH Young plans to move its Intel processor-based applications to a new, 4-way i820 running nine virtual Linux servers in logical partitions. "We selected Linux on the iSeries because it was such a compelling alternative to the cost and complexity of managing nine separate Intel-based servers," said GH Young's Nigel Fortlage, Vice President of IT.

Marist College, noted for leadership in the use of technology to enhance the teaching and learning process, is working with IBM on a project to provide virtual Linux servers on an IBM mainframe to each of Marist's computer science students, giving them a secure, independent virtual computer for each student to use throughout their undergraduate program. Students will be able to access their virtual machines via FTP and Telnet with no restrictions on usage. They can also install additional software on the server, such as an HTTP server, a database or an application server. In more advanced courses, students will receive additional virtual servers as needed, creating a virtual Linux environment in which they can install, configure, implement and test their distributed applications. The IBM mainframe can run hundreds of Linux systems as virtual servers, all within a single logical partition. These systems function just as if they were running on a stand-alone server but without its inherent limitations in meeting the demands of a large, diverse user community.

The Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University in St. Louis has purchased an IBM eServer BladeCenter running Linux to help with research and analysis of large scale genomic data. Washington University needed a blade server system that had power, increased compute density and high availability. The eServer BladeCenter will help with the intense workloads of research and analysis of genomic data.

About IBM

IBM is the world's leading server company and information technology provider, with 80 years of leadership in helping businesses innovate. IBM helps customers, Business Partners and developers in a wide range of industries that leverage the power of the Internet for e-business. For more information on IBM and Linux, visit http://www.ibm.com/linux.

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CONTACT: IBM

Stacy Simpson, 914/766-4123

stacysim@us.ibm.com