ACADEMIA

Just in time for the 2005 Holiday Season, NEC Solutions (America) today announced a new hardware leasing program geared to drive sales for NECSAM's fiscal year, second half. NECSAM, in conjunction with NEC Financial Services, is offering a "no money down/no payment for 90-days" leasing agreement on NEC's Fault Tolerant (FT) servers, Itanium 2 servers, storage disk arrays, and software through the end of December 2005. This promotion is set to increase both sales and exposure of NECSAM's complete enterprise offerings, and is available through both direct NECSAM channels and authorized NECSAM distributors. Fault Tolerant Servers NEC's innovative Intel based High Availability FT servers provide a new level of continuous availability for an organization's mission critical applications. Available for both the Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems, NEC's FT solutions deliver higher performance and have added protection against downtime at the application level; thereby allowing enterprises running essential business applications to benefit from greater processing speeds and up to 99.999% continuous availability. NEC's FT servers deliver maximum uptime and ample storage capacity to meet the most demanding enterprise server requirements. Itanium Servers Derived from NEC's advanced super computer architecture, NEC's Express5800/1000 series of Intel Itanium 2 Processor servers can be configured with up to 32 of Intel's new 64-bit processors. The Itanium 2 processor provides the optimum mid-range Itanium platform architecture that can scale to the needs of the most demanding datacenter environments. Available for Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition, Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition, Red Hat Linux and SUSE Linux, the Express5800/1000 series delivers high-speed processing and high scalability. By combining the Itanium 2 architecture with NECSAM's own innovative crossbar switch and high-speed memory access technology, NECSAM has successfully created the next generation of scalable servers for the enterprise market. Storage Solutions Through this leasing program, NEC is also offering its line of storage disc arrays and storage management software. Included are: NEC's S2800 midrange model, as well as NEC's new S2400 and S1400 disc arrays, which are delivered in pre-configured reliability, performance and availability bundles. NEC's high performance storage solutions, includes integrated management software, which monitors and alerts appropriate IT staff to the status of storage conditions. By combining storage hardware and software NECSAM is helping organizations address the following business issues: regulatory compliance, Information Lifecycle Management (ILM), business continuity/disaster recovery and email governance. "We are in a competitive hardware market, and recognize that our promotion is an aggressive move to get our enterprise solutions in front of customers that in previous years had not thought of NEC for their server and storage hardware in the U.S. market," said Larry Sheffield, executive vice president, of the Solutions Platform Group for NEC Solutions America. "This incentive leasing program allows us to provide customers an offer that is impressive; both in price and service. By delivering savings on internal operating costs, a NEC server can be virtually FREE over the life of the lease. By taking advantage and committing to server and storage leases in 2005, organizations can implement technology sooner than anticipated, while delaying the commencement of lease payments until 2006. In addition, customers can choose from one of two different lease structures that best suit their financial requirements." Leasing Structures Through this program, NEC is offering two different and compelling leasing options: 1. Fair Market Value Lease Option: This program offers the customer the lowest possible lease payment option. At the end of lease, the customer has the option to purchase the leased equipment at a price that does not exceed the fair market value of the equipment. This type of lease may yield significant tax advantages. The lease rate factor for this option is 0.03220. 2. One Dollar Purchase Lease Option: This lease type entitles the customer the benefits of ownership, such as interest and depreciation deductions. After all the lease payments are contributed, the customer can purchase the equipment for $1.00. The lease rate factor for this option is 0.03301. To determine the monthly payments for the lease, multiply the cost of the equipment by the lease rate factor for the selected plan. This special deal is available starting today through December 31, 2005, and is offered to all qualified commercial business customers located in the U.S. The actual term of the lease will be thirty-nine (39) months with the first of thirty-six (36) required lease payments due three (3) months after the commencement of the lease. Minimum transaction size to qualify for this lease is $25,000 for the new equipment cost, and must include at least one NEC server or storage system to be eligible for this promotion.