B&L Associates

B&L OFFERS VERTICES AUTOMATIC MEDIA LOGGING FOR ARCserve®IT™

First to bring integrated removable media management to open systems environments...

NEEDHAM, Mass. - March 13, 2000 -- B&L Associates, Inc., a leading provider of computer media management software, today announced the Vertices ARCserve®IT™ Automation Agent, a module that directly links the Vertices comprehensive, enterprise-wide removable media management system to Computer Associates' ARCserveIT for Microsoft Windows NT environments.

The Vertices ARCserveIT Automation Agent now offers integrated vault, retention and inventory management of removable media that rivals the tape management facilities available for mainframe systems and overwhelms other open system media management methods on the market. Valuable for sites that are backing up large amounts of data with ARCserveIT, the new Vertices Automation Agent eliminates manual logging, which reduces errors and saves time and money.

Vertices Automates Media Control, Movement and Recovery

The Vertices Automation Agent™ automatically captures relevant media information from ARCserveIT logs and inserts the information into the Vertices database. This capability makes it much more efficient to control the movement, archiving and retrieval of data.

Once the information is imported from ARCserveIT, Vertices controls critical media management aspects such as movements, media location, inventory reconciliations, and more. Often an unmanageable situation for large Windows NT installations, system managers of ARCserveIT environments can now keep track of the media that houses their mission critical data. This is not only essential for audit purposes, but from a recovery standpoint as well.

"For years we've been offering our customers automated logging by directly accessing the sophisticated logging facilities of mainframe environments. But these logs don't exist in open systems," said Michael Kramer, B&L vice president of sales and marketing. "Today, the amount of media storage required by applications has become unmanageable. Companies can't find the tape that their precious data was written to, and they are starting to take action to address this problem. Until now, media management has always been an afterthought. B&L is the first company to take media management in an open, distributed environment seriously. Because of our mainframe roots, we know exactly how media management should function. Automation Agents are an essential part of that functionality."

Vertices Automation Agent for ARCserveIT for Microsoft Windows NT is available immediately from B&L Associates and authorized resellers.

About B&L Associates

B&L Associates, established in 1975, is the largest media management provider to the Unisys ClearPath marketplace and a leader in open systems media management. The company offers a full suite of data center operations automation products and storage management solutions, as well as on-line scheduling, billing and labeling systems through a network of qualified value added resellers (VARs). B&L, with installations in 26 countries, serves some of the world's leading organizations, including Electronic Data Systems (EDS), the Home Shopping Network, the city of Miami, the state of Michigan, the General Services Administration, and Unisys Corporation. B&L is a Computer Associates Unicenter TNG Development Partner and Vertices has achieved the "Unicentered" level of integration. For further information, contact B&L at 877-VERTICES (877-837-8423) or http://www.bandl.com.

B&L, the B&L Associates logo, the BBARS logos, BL/SCHED, BL/PACK, BL/SOURCE, BL/DIST, and BL/LIB are registered trademarks of B&L Associates, Inc. VERTICES®, the Vertices® logo, and THE POINT WHERE ALL MEDIA COME TOGETHER are registered trademarks and VERTICES AUTOMATION MODULE™, VERTICES AUTOMATION AGENT™, VERTICES BAR CODE SCANNING MODULE™, and VERTICES LABELWRITER MODULE™ are trademarks exclusively licensed to B&L Associates, Inc. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Editors - for further information contact:

L.J. DiCarlo
B&L Associates
781/444-1404
ljdicarlo@bandl.com

Sandy McLaughlin
Soucy Communications Group
978/266-1700
sandym@scg-pr.com