---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Florida SunFlash Third Party Announcements 3 SunFLASH Vol 42 #26 June 1992 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scopus launches ProTEAM SBus IPI Disk controller (SOLstor S212) NFS Monitor from Metrix Network Systems LCD Projector display with Laser for Sun -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Scopus launches ProTEAM From: Ed Niehaus Summary: EMERYVILLE, CA June 15, 1992 -- Scopus Technology, Inc. announced ProTEAM, client-server groupware to automate the operations of software companies and software-centered organizations. ProTEAM integrates the entire organizationQengineering, quality assurance, technical support, sales and marketingQall share a Sybase SQLserver-based database of product and customer information. ProTEAM modules now available include SupportTEAM for call tracking and customer support, QualityTEAM for bug tracking and quality control and ViewTEAM for graphical analysis of information. ProTEAM turns product and customer data into Renterprise memory,S an information asset that all departments use to improve customer service and product quality. Companies can configure all aspects of ProTEAM to meet their specific requirements, without custom programming. ProTEAM applications run on any client that supports X-Windows. The client licenses cost less than $3000 per user in a typical configuration. Call Scopus at 510-428-0500. EMERYVILLE, Calif., June 15, 1992--Scopus Technology, Inc., announced ProTEAM, a family of products to automate the operations of software companies and software centered organizations. Much more than a tracking product, ProTEAM is a flexible and configurable groupware system that automates and integrates the operations of technical support, engineering, quality assurance, sales and marketing. ProTEAM enhances the communication between departments, providing real improvements in product quality and customer satisfaction. At the heart of Scopus ProTEAM is a product/customer database employing the well-known Sybase SQL Server relational database. ProTEAM captures and organizes product and customer data to provide an information asset for all employees. The ProTEAM client applications were developed specifically for the unique requirements of professionals in the software industry. Currently available modules include QualityTEAM for bug tracking and quality control, SupportTEAM for technical support operations and ViewTEAM for analysis of information using a myriad of charts and graphs. These client modules share a suite of ProTEAM services that provide utilities for search and retrieval of information, report writing and event driven notifications. Scopus will announce additional ProTEAM client modules and shared services later this year. Configure without code using object-oriented tools ProTEAMUs architecture is designed to store a companyUs configuration information in a database, not as lines of source code. No matter how extensively ProTEAM has been configured for an installation, the executable software being loaded and run remains unchanged. This Rsingle binary releaseS approach to configuration means that ProTEAM is supported and upgraded easily and normally, unlike solutions that require source code modification and expensive consulting from the vendor. When Scopus introduces a new version of ProTEAM, the user simply loads the configuration tables and the new version automatically inherits all of the organizationUs custom characteristics. Complex organizations want advanced tools that fit their needs precisely, but managers resist using busy in-house programmers to design, develop, upgrade and maintain a built-it-ourselves environment. ProTEAMUs configuration tool gives the flexibility to meet these specific requirements. Even a non-programmer can graphically manipulate, modify and reuse fields, buttons and forms to meet exactly the needs of each department. It is also easy to configure important "business rules" ranging from bug aging to call escalation, so the system does what the manager wants with the information gathered. Harness "enterprise memory" for quality and responsiveness ProTEAM builds an information asset that all departments can use, explained Aaron Omid, Scopus VP of sales. "Most software organizations have no methodology for capturing and reusing information about their products and customers," said Mr. Omid. "Much of what is learned just stays in peoples' heads, or is casually and inefficiently communicated. ProTEAM addresses organizations' need to collect and share that experience, not just within departments, but throughout the organization. The resulting `Enterprise Memory,U the sum of this captured information, is an asset that contains the company's up-to-the minute knowledge of its customers and products. ProTEAM gives all users full access to this information through powerful search, query and report facilities. Managers can tap enterprise memory to evaluate team performance and find ways of improving product quality and service responsiveness." QualityTEAM module: manage bugs to assure quality Tracking and management of bugs and other exceptions in software products is a challenge not met by general-purpose product defect tracking systems. Scopus designed the QualityTEAM module specifically for use in software organizations. QualityTEAMallows managers to establish and enforce process rules for accepting, assigning, tracking, fixing and closing bugs and other exceptions. The application keeps engineers, quality assurance and technical support personnel in closer contact with one another, informing everyone involved with a particular problem about resolution status and work-arounds. QualityTEAM automatically produces release notes for new software RbuildsS (i.e., new revisions), permitting Q/A to spend time improving quality rather than documenting builds. QualityTEAM avoids wasted effort in handling duplicate and sub-set bugs by establishing linkages between related bug reports. With a few keystrokes, users document reoccurring problems in QualityTEAM application-notes that are easily accessible to everyone. SupportTEAM module: don't just track calls...solve problems! The SupportTEAM module provides technical support with the information needed to handle customer problems quickly and smoothly. It provides instant access to the enterprise memory so even inexperienced support people can answer questions promptly and accurately. Technical support personnel can review detailed site information, such as current pending issues for a customer and status of maintenance contracts, keeping them aware of the customers overall environment. Companies can build advanced diagnostics that probe customers for additional information, depending on the details of a particular problem. This feature reduces the number of times a customer must be called to gather all of the information required to fix the problem. When a support person determines that the problem was caused by a bug they can automatically submit a bug report into the QualityTEAM bugs database. Additionally, they can easily search and review the bugs database for helpful information such as work-arounds. Support personnel can cross-reference a customerUs problem report to a known bug; when the bug is fixed, support receives an automatic notification. ViewTEAM module: graphically view team performance Managing software operations is a difficult task. Companies require performance metrics for all aspects of the operation. ViewTEAM provides bar, pie and line charts that instantly bring to life performance statistics ranging from a bug aging to the backlog of unresolved calls. ViewTEAM can provide charts to each team member to keep that person aware of relevant status and performance indicators. For instance, a quality assurance engineer may want to view the history of severity-one bugs in multiple modules. Or, a vice president of support might want to look at the number of unresolved calls by customer type or geography or by product family. The VP of engineering may want to see how close a productUs quality metrics are to meeting alpha, beta or production standards. ViewTEAM provides all employees with the information necessary to measure and evaluate their progress in improving product quality and customer satisfaction. ProTEAM Services: Advanced services available to all users Each ProTEAM client application has access to a suite of advanced services that run on the ProTEAM server. The services include: The ProTEAM Notification Service automatically notifies the right people when certain events occur. For example, the release of a bug fix by Q/A may trigger notification of a group of support people who have customers waiting for that bug fix. The Notification Service is configurable to fit each organizationUs business procedures. The ProTEAM Search and Retrieval Service provides a powerful tool for finding useful information. Users can graphically create advanced queries on the product/ customer database. In addition, they can locate documents using a true "keyword search" facility. For instance, users can easily search the database for all bug reports with the keywords "memory" and "leak". Keywords are automatically extracted from each document in the database, normalized and indexed to make the searching fast and effective. The ProTEAM Report Service provides a tool to create custom reports from the product/customer database. These reports can integrate information from multiple departments. For instance companies can create reports that show the status of all bugs that have been reported by customers. This report could include both bug information and customer information. Reports can be displayed on the screen, printed on hard copy or distributed to employees and customers through e-mail. Price and availability Scopus requires a license for each concurrent user of a ProTEAM module. An organization buys enough floating licenses to give each user an appropriate amount of access to the system. Most companies buy one SupportTEAM client license for each technical support person because they will use this application all day, yet buy just one QualityTEAM module for each team of four or five engineers. Each site requires one ProTEAM server that includes a run-time license for Sybase's SQLserver and the ProTEAM Services. A typical configuration that would support 4 technical support people and 20 engineers would cost about $45,000. Adding licenses takes a simple phone call to Scopus. Scopus ProTEAM is available today. ProTEAM clients can run on any X-Windows capable system. The ProTEAM Server runs on any server that supports Sybase including HP 9000, IBM RS6000, MIPS and Sun SPARC servers. Press contacts: David Schwab Scopus Technology, Inc. (510) 428-0500 Ed Niehaus Niehaus Ryan Haller Public Relations (415) 615-7908 home phone (415) 346-6499 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- From: grc!carl@uwm.edu (Carl Pick) Subject: SBus IPI Disk controller (SOLstor S212) GENROCO is now shipping its new SOLstor S212, the industry's first ultra high performance IPI-2 disk controller for SBus. The introduction of this product is timely in that it coincides with the availability of several new, low cost drives, especially the 2 gigabyte, 7.5 megabyte per second (unformatted), 5.25" Elite-2 from Seagate. Features of the SOLstor S212 include: o Requires single S-bus option module slot o Sustainable DMA transfers of over 12 megabytes per second o Controls up to eight 8", 5.25", and/or 3.5" IPI-2 drives per module (as much as 20 gigabytes) o Uses leading edge Error Detection and Correction Code o Based on multitasking 16 bit RISC mpu o Performs command consolidation & queuing, read ahead buffering, seek optimization, and rotational latency ordering o Support for Sun's Online Disk Suite & IPI Dual-Port Tools The product includes SunOS driver and installation software. Onboard Flash EPROM allows for firmware updates without removing the module from its SBus slot. Current SCSI-2 products have a cache buffer that can transfer data at up to 10 megabytes per second. This is often called the "peak" or "external" data rate. However, the actual transfer rate to and from the media (the "sustainable" or "internal" rate) is typically only about 2 or 3 megabytes per second when formatted. IPI drives managed by the GENROCO controller (which does the buffering at about 25 megabytes per second) have sustainable, internal, media transfer rates of over 6 megabytes per second. Comparing buffer to buffer and media to media speeds, IPI today holds a throughput edge of two to one or better over SCSI. SOLstor S212 controllers have a list price of 4495 US Dollars FOB factory. A variety of complete subsystems are also available. Volume and distributor discounts are offered. Please contact GENROCO for non-US pricing. Other SOLstor products which will be available soon include * S205 5 megabyte per second low cost IPI-2 controller (July) * S315 15 megabyte per second IPI-3 adapter (August) * S325 25 megabyte per second top speed IPI-2 & 3 controller (October) For data sheets, sales information, or other inquiries, contact Don Woelz (don@grc.genroco.com) GENROCO, Inc. tel: (414) 644-8700 or toll free at (800) 2GENROCO fax: (414) 644-6667 Internet: sales@genroco.com In Europe, contact Peter Williams (peterw@gre.genroco.com) GENROCO Europe, Ltd. tel: (44) 291-430-388 fax: (44) 291-430-476 Internet: sales@genroco.com -- __________________ | | Carl A. Pick, Chairman | ______________| | |##| |###\ G E N R O C O , I n c . | |##| |####) | |##| |###/ 205 Kettle Moraine Drive North | |##| |\------- Slinger, WI 53086 U.S.A. | |##| |#\ | | |##| |##\ | Phone: 414-644-8700 | |##| |###\ | Fax: 414-644-6667 | | Voicemail: 414-791-5530 |__________________| INTERNET email: carl@genroco.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: NFS Monitor from Metrix Network Systems From: metrix!neeraj@uunet.UU.NET (Neeraj Sangal) A new NFS Monitor in the NetMetrix(tm) toolset ---------------------------------------------- Metrix Network Systems, Inc. announces enhancements to the NFS Monitor in release 2.60 of the NetMetrix toolset. NetMetrix is a Sun based network monitoring toolset which includes a Protocol Analyzer, Load Monitor, NFS Monitor and a Traffic Generator. Description ----------- The NFS Monitor is a passive monitoring tool which lets you examine the NFS Load on your network and to measure the actual response time. You can set up the monitor to capture and display data in real time or to do extended long term monitoring. The NFS Load and Response time can be categorized over time intervals, servers, clients, NFS procs, NFS filesystems or Users. In addition a unique zoom feature allows you to correlate information between server, client, NFS proc and time interval. The NFS Monitor will assist you in answering questions such as these: 1. Identify overloaded servers. 2. Balance NFS Load between various servers and file systems. 3. See which clients and users are generating how much of the NFS Load for each server and file system and what the actual response time is. 4. Evaluate if an accelerator will improve performance. 5. Decide if clients and servers should be moved to different segments to reduce bridge and router traffic. As part of the new release, many improvements have been made to the Protocol Analyzer, the Traffic Generator and the Load Monitor as well. Price, Free Trial & Ordering ---------------------------- The NFS Monitor is regularly priced at $1995 and is available immediately. The software is available for a free 30 day evaluation. Metrix Network Systems, Inc. 1 Tara Blvd Nashua, NH 03062 Tel: (603) 888-7000 Fax: (603) 891-2796 email: sales@metrix.com or uunet!metrix!sales -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subject: LCD Projector display with Laser for Sun From: gary@sunburst.com (Gary Gwin) SUNBURST ANNOUNCES PRESENTATION SERIES FOR SUN; PORTABLE, SCREEN PROJECTION SYSTEMS FOR UNIX San Diego, CA, June 15, 1992 - Sunburst Computers announced the Sunburst Presentation Series for SPARC workstations. The new product line, which features compact, light- weight, and portable components, enables users to project their SPARCstation display image onto projection screens or walls. With the fast growth of the Sun market, companies are in need of portable Unix presentation systems for sales demonstrations, marketing seminars, trade shows, in-house and off-site training, and more. The new Sunburst Presentation Series can flexibly meet the requirements of these corporate users with integrated products that easily attach to existing SPARCstations or that provide a complete, portable SPARCstation presentation environment. "Companies are spending tens of thousands of dollars annually on shipping, rental, and setup costs for their Unix presentations," said Daniel Vahalla, president of Sunburst Computers. "With our Presentation Series, you save money and hassles by carrying everything you need for your Sun presentations in one hand. On-site, users can set these systems up in less than 5 minutes for powerful, interactive presentations to audiences of any size." The Sunburst Presentation Series consists of The Complete Presenter(TM) and The SPARC Presenter(TM) products. Both products include: o A state-of-the-art 226,000 color active matrix projection panel with digital NTSC video and audio control. o Cyclops "Eye" wand and laser pointer with Sunburst device driver for X Window System application support under SunOS. o Connection to display live video from a camera or VCR on the screen. o All necessary video hardware and cables for connection to SPARCstations. o Soft carrying case. The SPARC Presenter is for use with existing SPARCstations. The Complete Presenter includes a portable SPARCstation laptop that is tailored to fit the customers needs. Portable SPARCstation are available with the Complete Presenter that range from 17 to 27 MIPS with 640x480 color, 640x480 monochrome, or 1152x900 monochrome LCD screens. The Complete Presenter and SPARC Presenter are available immediately from Sunburst Computers for the price of $17,995 (Portable SPARCstation BRTL-IPC-M model) and $10,295 respectively. For more information, contact the Sunburst sales department at (619) 633-1680 (or send e-mail to sales@sunburst.com). Sunburst Computers is a privately held integrator of Unix technologies. The company features an integrated line of Unix presentation products, connectivity products, application software, and hardware systems. Sunburst's Presentation Series enables users to easily transport and demonstrate their Sun software and hardware products to audiences of any size. Sunburst connectivity and application software, hardware, and services provide systems administrators and corporate users with complete, reliable integration of Unix hardware and software. Contacts: Daniel Vahalla President (619) 633-4303 Gary Gwin Marketing Director (619) 633-4307 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ For information send mail to info-sunflash@sunvice.East.Sun.COM. Subscription requests should be sent to sunflash-request@sunvice.East.Sun.COM. Archives are on solar.nova.edu, paris.cs.miami.edu, uunet.uu.net, src.doc.ic.ac.uk and ftp.adelaide.edu.au All prices, availability, and other statements relating to Sun or third party products are valid in the U.S. only. Please contact your local Sales Representative for details of pricing and product availability in your region. Descriptions of, or references to products or publications within SunFlash does not imply an endorsement of that product or publication by Sun Microsystems. John McLaughlin, SunFlash editor, flash@sunvice.East.Sun.COM. (305) 776-7770.