Symantec and IBM xSeries Help Entertainment Partners Eliminate Downtime With Linux

CUPERTINO, Calif. - Jan 24, 2006 Symantec Corp. (NASDAQ: SYMC) today announced that Entertainment Partners is using Veritas Storage Foundation, now from Symantec, with IBM xSeries servers running Linux to reduce server total cost of ownership by 40 percent. The combined solution optimizes system performance and enables 24/7 availability of customers’ critical financial data.

California-based Entertainment Partners has been the leader in payroll and production services for the entertainment industry for 27 years. Entertainment Partners must save its clients’ financial data for a number of years to maintain compliance with a variety of regulations and as a result, the company’s storage requirement has grown at a rate of ten percent annually, recently reaching seven terabytes. The company turned to Veritas Storage Foundation and IBM xSeries servers running Linux for a scalable, high-availability platform with a lower cost of ownership.

“The entertainment industry is a 24/7 business and there is no room for downtime,” says Michael Wojtowicz, IT manager, Entertainment Partners. “Our growing client base and the need to comply with legal regulations mean that data availability is more critical than ever before.”

Using Veritas Storage Foundation and Portable Data Container (PDC) technology, now from Symantec, Entertainment Partners was able to seamlessly migrate from a proprietary UNIX environment to IBM xSeries servers running Linux, with no interruptions to the company’s production environment or end user access. The PDC feature in Veritas Storage Foundation allows customers to quickly and easily migrate data from UNIX to Linux and does so without requiring additional copies or movement of information.

Entertainment Partners is using IBM’s Intel processor-based xSeries servers with Enterprise X-Architecture(TM) to maximize uptime and optimize performance and scalability. With the new systems in place, Entertainment Partners has reduced total cost of ownership for their server systems by 40 percent and virtually eliminated storage-related application downtime. The flexibility and scalability of IBM’s xSeries systems will allow Entertainment Partners to expand systems and system capabilities as its business needs grow.

“Using Veritas Storage Foundation with IBM xSeries servers, we can now leverage the flexibility and cost savings of Linux without sacrificing the performance our customers have come to expect,” adds Wojtowicz. “Together, Symantec and IBM have helped us drive down the cost of managing our data center, while ensuring that our customer data is secure and highly available.”

“By leveraging the data migration capabilities in Veritas Storage Foundation, Entertainment Partners was able to speed its move to Linux and the IBM xSeries platform,” said Rob Soderbery, vice president, product management, Storage and Server Management Group, Symantec. “Working together, Symantec and IBM xSeries are helping customers like Entertainment Partners take advantage of new developments in Linux technology, while maintaining the performance and high availability they’ve come to expect from UNIX.”

“Like so many of our customers today, Entertainment Partners must ensure the availability of an increasing amount of critical customer data without an expanding budget,” said Juhi Jotwani, director, IBM xSeries Solutions. “Veritas file system, volume management and high availability software running with IBM xSeries servers provides our customers with a proven solution for data availability, while allowing them to make cost-effective decisions within the data center.”

IBM is reselling Veritas Cluster Server and Storage Foundation products from Symantec with IBM xSeries and BladeCenter servers running RedHat, SUSE Linux, and Microsoft Windows. The solutions are available through IBM xSeries sales and IBM xSeries business partners.

About Symantec
Symantec is the world leader in providing solutions to help individuals and enterprises assure the security, availability, and integrity of their information. Headquartered in Cupertino, Calif., Symantec has operations in more than 40 countries. More information is available at www.symantec.com.

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Contact Information

Kelly Schwager

Corporate Public Relations

Symantec Corp.

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