NEC Solutions (America), Inc. and Lenel Systems International, Inc. announced today that they have signed a joint agreement designed to increase the availability of computer servers supporting many of our nation's public and private security systems. Under the agreement, Lenel will offer HA-OnGuard(tm) as a new, optional level of availability for its OnGuard(R) comprehensive, ever-expanding suite of security management applications including access control, alarm monitoring, digital video, intrusion detection, asset tracking, information security integration, credential production and employee/visitor management functionality. HA-OnGuard will utilize NEC's Express5800/320Lb High Availability (fault tolerant) servers. "Availability" refers to the percentage of time that an application can perform its functions according to its performance specifications, including both planned and unplanned downtime over the application's lifetime. Together, Lenel's and NEC's award-winning technologies have been designed to deliver up to 99.999% or better availability, which translates into less than five minutes of unplanned downtime per year. Because NEC's servers are designed to withstand multiple hardware failures while maintaining uninterrupted operation, the servers deliver true fault tolerance. By contrast, the servers on which security systems have traditionally been run have offered availability rated at 99% (48 hours or more of downtime per year). Redundant security systems are often deployed with a group of servers connected together, called clustered servers. Those clustered systems require extensive application programming and maintenance at the time of installation and with every software upgrade. Combining integrated security and high availability technologies simplifies installation and ongoing security network management because the NEC servers run Microsoft Windows-based applications in a high availability state directly out of the box, without requiring any application programming or ongoing maintenance. "Combining NEC's high availability servers with Lenel's security products will further simplify security for end users while reducing the costs for delivering availability," said Mike Mitsch, senior director of marketing at NEC Solutions America. "The choice to go with fault tolerant servers will also eliminate the need to custom-code applications, further reducing deployment and management costs." "Lenel has established a market leadership position because of the technological edge, flexibility and robustness built into our products. Now, integrating NEC's High Availability servers with OnGuard security systems will simplify long-term management for our customers while making the networks more stable and resilient against hardware failure," said Rudy Prokupets, Lenel's Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President of Research and Development. "This approach radically reduces time to deployment, and removes the customer networking headaches that traditionally have been part of the third-party networking systems used in all security systems. It's a decisive step forward for the security industry, and Lenel is proud to be leading the way with the help of NEC." NEC Solutions High Availability Servers The NEC High Availability server series is designed to deliver continuous availability computing using 24x7 fault tolerant technology with industry-standard hardware and software. The servers provide among the highest levels of system availability (up to 99.999% uptime) and data integrity for Microsoft® Windows 2000® and Server(TM) 2003 environments. The innovative lockstep technology uses duplicated, fault-tolerant hardware components that process the same instructions and computation at the same time. In the event of a hardware fault, the duplicated component acts as an active spare and continues normal operation with no interruption in processing, and no loss of performance or data integrity experienced by end users. More information on NEC's High Availability server series is available at www.necsam.com/servers. Availability The Lenel HA-OnGuard high availability solution is available today for customers requiring immediate deployment of simplified, high availability security solutions, as well as those seeking to upgrade existing OnGuard Security servers. Those interested in exploring the benefits of 99.999% availability can find more information on Lenel's web site at www.lenel.com/99999. Contact information for Lenel's Technology Relationship Managers can be found at: www.lenel.com/sales.