Rembo is now a part of IBM

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Questions and Answers

1. Q: What are you announcing?
A: IBM has entered into an agreement to acquire Rembo Technology, a privately funded company headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland with 12 employees. The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals and various closing conditions, and is expected to close in 2Q06. Rembo Technology is a leading provider of operating system (OS) imaging and bare metal installation technology, which allows companies to automate the installation and configuration of operating systems, saving IT resources considerable time maintaining servers, desktops and laptops. Rembo Technology products allow IT staff to remotely install operating systems or upgrades across hundreds of physical or virtual machines at the same time, even when no OS is currently installed. This helps eliminate the need for IT specialists to physically visit each machine and be able to perform configuration tasks much more quickly.

2. Q: What are the financial details of this acquisition?
A: The financial details of this acquisition are not being disclosed.

3. Q: Why is IBM acquiring Rembo Technology?
A: Rembo Technology’s products will allow IBM to deliver a key capability in the change and configuration area of IT service management. Today, IT departments spend much of their time on maintenance activities instead of new development. Activities such as a single operating system installation or upgrade can take more than 2 hours of dedicated IT staff time and with numerous distractions, is often an error-prone activity. Multiply this by thousands of systems spread across the enterprise and the costs can quickly consume IT budgets. In addition, companies realize that in order to be leaders, their IT departments need to be more adaptive to changing conditions. This means that IT specialists need to leverage existing resources and repurpose underutilized assets to meet the demands of the business.

Rembo Technology helps companies reduce the cost of managing operating systems. IT staff can install or upgrade operating systems quickly and accurately whether those systems are located within the datacenter or in remote locations. In addition, by enabling operating system installations to “bare metal” systems (i.e. those without an OS already installed), Rembo Technology helps companies provision a standard desktop configuration to newly acquired systems. When used with Tivoli Configuration Manager, Tivoli Provisioning Manager or Tivoli Intelligent Orchestrator, companies can move toward fully automating the provisioning of IT services - starting with bare metal servers and continuing through composite applications with fully configured network and storage devices.

4. Q: How does the Rembo Technology reboot technology work?
A: Consider a banking institution with several hundred remote branch locations. Branch locations typically include a server and several desktops, but rarely is there a dedicated IT specialist on site, so most of the maintenance and administration of the branch systems is done remotely. Periodically, systems fail or are infected by a computer virus and need to be rebuilt from the operating system through the application. In branch banks, this means calling a local IT service company to come and fix the problem, or sending the system back to corporate for centralized repair, and both actions entail additional cost and disruption to the business. With Rembo Technology, a new, clean and verified OS can be deployed to the branch and installed in just minutes. Once installed, Tivoli Configuration Manager or Tivoli Provisioning Manger can facilitate the installation of additional application software to get the system productive again.

5. Q: How does the Rembo Technology imaging technology work?
A: Consider a migration from Microsoft Windows 2000 to Windows XP at those same branches. Instead of reinstalling a single system to get it up and running, you need to manage the rollout to 30,000 computers. This can pose additional problems if lingering code from the prior installation conflicts with the upgrade. Thus, companies often choose to migrate to a clean system image rather than install over an existing operating system that may have accumulated clutter (e.g. corrupt files, remnants of deleted applications, etc). Rembo Technology helps companies deploy and dynamically configure these new upgrades in compliance with corporate standards. Thus, in addition to saving thousands of hours of IT staff time and travel expenses, Rembo Technology also helps IT departments streamline the process so the newly deployed upgrades match desired configuration levels and will be more stable and reliable. This helps reduce system downtime and calls to the help desk which negatively impact employee productivity.

6. Q: How big an opportunity does this address?
A: Operating system imaging and bare metal installation is not typically identified as a standalone market. It is part of the Change and Configuration opportunity that IDC has forecasted will increase to $3.0 billion in 2009, up 47% from 2004.¹

¹ "Worldwide System Operations Software 2005-2009 Forecast", March, 2005, IDC, #33154

7. Q: How does this fit into IT service management?
A: Rembo Technology software helps organizations cut the cost of managing software across an open IT infrastructure, which is a key goal of IT service management. IBM's IT service management software portfolio automates and simplifies the way companies manage their infrastructures. With IT service management, companies can handle IT processes the same way they manage business processes, which helps improve efficiency, effectiveness, and agility.

8. Q. What products does Rembo Technology provide?
A. Rembo Technology has two primary products, Rembo Technology AutoDeploy and Rembo Technology Toolkit. Both allow companies to automate the installation and configuration of operating systems, saving considerable time maintaining servers, desktops and laptops. In addition, the toolkit includes a rich programming interface allowing companies, systems integrators and business partners to create custom integration with other products.

Rembo Technology also has a product called AutoBackup that provides data recovery capabilities. IBM will continue to evaluate the capabilities of AutoBackup following the acquisition.

9. Q: What are IBM’s plans for Rembo Technology products?
A: Rembo Technology will continue to sell the existing products. Following close, we anticipate that an IBM version will ship -in or around Q2 2006. We are currently evaluating plans to integrate Rembo Technology products into Tivoli Provisioning Manager. Customers will be able to immediately see value by implementing Rembo Technology to automate OS installation and configuration. As they evolve their IT departments and begin to automate additional aspects of their environment, they will have the opportunity to upgrade to Tivoli Provisioning Manager while leveraging their existing Rembo Technology investment.

10. Q: How do Rembo Technology products complement Tivoli products?
A: Rembo Technology specializes in automating the configuration and deployment of operating systems. It can help to reproduce and deploy systems very quickly and provide customers a rapid return on investment. However, most customers want more than OS imaging and pre-boot management. They also want to distribute and manage their security patches, middleware and applications as part of a comprehensive source of hardware and software information. Tivoli Provisioning Manager (“TPM”) and Tivoli Configuration Manager (“TCM”) pick up where Rembo Technology leaves off to complete the change and release processes. TPM and TCM provide automated software distribution, inventory and patch management that helps customers automate their change and release processes.

Information regarding future direction and roadmaps represents IBM's current goals and intent only, and is subject to change or withdrawal by IBM.