COLUMBUS, Ohio, Sept. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- The Technology One Alliance,
formed by BANC ONE CORPORATION with AT&T Solutions and IBM Global Services,
envisions a new model for the continuing job growth, training and experience
of information technology professionals under one umbrella federation.
    Under long-term contracts with BANC ONE, about 550 current BANC ONE data
center and telecommunication professionals will join either AT&T Solutions,
IBM Global Services or Lucent Technologies, which will serve as a
subcontractor to AT&T Solutions.  Most of the jobs will remain in the Columbus
area.
    AT&T Solutions will welcome nearly 175 of the bank's employees, IBM Global
Services will take on approximately 300 bank employees and about 75 employees
will join Lucent Technologies.  When the Technology One Alliance is fully
functioning, employees of the participating companies will have the
opportunity to receive training and developmental job assignments among its
members.
    Marv Adams, Chief Technology Officer for BANC ONE, said, "Technology and
telecommunications professionals are in high demand throughout the country.
This new alliance will offer tremendous opportunities for current and future
employees of our member companies.
    "Employees will no longer need to leave one company and join another to
expand their work experience or advance their careers," Adams said.  "This new
alliance will be a powerful magnet for highly skilled IT and networking
talent."
    The Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University, in
conjunction with the member companies, will provide continuing educational
services for the Technology One Alliance.  AT&T and IBM will be working with
local academic institutions, including Ohio State, to explore opportunities
for developing academic activities aimed at specifically producing skilled
professionals in information and networking technology.
    AT&T is launching this effort with an initial grant of $50,000 to Ohio
State to facilitate curriculum planning and development.
    Further, the Technology One Alliance members will work with Ohio State to
provide internships and other ongoing training opportunities, Adams said.
    AT&T Solutions and IBM Global Services are both establishing technology
centers in the greater-Columbus area to support the Technology One Alliance.
    A new AT&T Solutions' Global Client Support Center will be opened later
this year in a 120,000-square-foot facility at One Metro Place in Dublin,
Ohio.  The center boasts AT&T Solutions Global Enterprise Management System
(GEMS), the world's most sophisticated networking-management platform, which
will provide customized, proactive, end-to-end management of voice, data and
video requirements for BANC ONE and other clients.
    IBM's new Banc One Technology Center of Excellence will provide world
class customer service, data center command and control, and help desk
technical support from a 215,000-square-foot service delivery center in the
Columbus suburb of Hilliard, Ohio.  An IBM advanced technology education
center will offer training to employees of IBM and those of the other member
companies.
    BANC ONE will also be the worldwide commercial deployment site for IBM's
leading edge Enterprise Systems Management (ESM) solutions.  The unique
interface of the AT&T Solutions GEMS networking-management platform with the
Tivoli-based ESM solutions provides the Technology One Alliance the most
advanced Information Technology management tools in the industry.
    Adams said other major technology companies may participate in the
alliance in the future and contribute to ongoing efforts to enrich the
experiences of its technology professionals.
    Rick Roscitt, president and CEO of AT&T Solutions, who will join Adams as
a member of the Technology One Alliance steering committee, said:
    "While large-scale outsourcing contracts aren't new, this is the first to
take the next step in forming a long-term alliance that will be aimed at
building our employees' technology careers and creating many new high-tech job
opportunities, while allowing BANC ONE and future partners to increase
competitiveness, plan for future growth and reduce costs associated with
upgrades in technology."
    Mark Morin, general manager - global banking, finance and securities, IBM
Global Services, will also join Adams on the steering committee.
    "This new alliance will permit BANC ONE to respond more quickly to current
and future integration activities across its national technology
infrastructure and leverage our capabilities to improve its efficiency.  Based
on the size and future potential of the alliance, its member companies will be
able to attract some of the very best technology professionals in the
country," Morin said.

          Technology One Alliance to Integrate Enterprise Management

    AT&T Solutions and IBM Global Services are committed to an industry first
-- the integration of their respective enterprise management systems -- in
support of BANC ONE CORPORATION's Technology One Alliance.
    The integration of AT&T Solutions' Global Enterprise Management System
(GEMS) platform with IBM's Tivoli-based Enterprise Systems Management (ESM)
solution will give BANC ONE a seamless, end-to-end "manager of managers"
approach across its corporate-wide technology infrastructure to increase the
productivity of the management of the networking and IT enterprise.
    At the base of both ESM and GEMS is a common set of processes and tools
that ensure all alliance members and systems operate as an integrated whole.
The members will jointly implement common systems tools within their spheres
of competence that will provide the important links between their independent
systems to provide the end-to-end application view that makes ESM and GEMS so
powerful as business tools.  The bank's view of ESM and GEMS will be as a
single system providing the information necessary to effectively manage its
business to ensure end users receive the highest availability.
    The Technology One Alliance will pilot end-to-end management across
desktop, network, server and application functions.  The goal is to manage
service levels and performance at the user level -- the true measure of IT's
value to the business.  The functions covered by the interfaced tools include:

    -- Network monitoring and management
    -- Device configuration management
    -- Traffic monitoring and analysis
    -- Operations management for local and remote servers (i.e., mainframe,
       midrange, and distributed LAN servers)
    -- Asset and inventory management
    -- Electronic software distribution
    -- Service management
    -- Job accounting and user chargeback
    -- Performance and service level reporting
    -- Security administration.

    AT&T Solutions and IBM Global Services will jointly implement the
integration from technology centers they are establishing in the
greater-Columbus area to support the Technology One Alliance.

    Facts about AT&T Solutions Global Client Support Center
    The newest AT&T Solutions Global Client Support Center, to be opened later
this year in Dublin, Ohio, will be the second such AT&T center in the United
States.  These centers are at the core of AT&T Solutions' ability to
seamlessly manage extensive, sophisticated global information networks for
multinational customers.
    AT&T Solutions, the professional services unit of AT&T, already operates
Global Client Support Centers in Durham, N.C., the United Kingdom, the
Netherlands, India, China and Singapore in managing clients' global networking
needs.
    The networking-management center in Dublin will occupy space in the new
One Metro Place complex.  It is scheduled to be opened in mid November,
employing specialists who will manage the networking needs of BANC ONE
CORPORATION and other clients.
    The highly trained information technology professionals who staff the
center will use GEMS, an industry-leading, proprietary software platform, to
manage clients' networks proactively and predictively.  Clients have given
AT&T Solutions high marks for notifying them of potential problems even before
they occur in applications, devices or other facets of their networks.
    "GEMS integrates best-in-class people, processes and tools," says Rick
Roscitt, president and CEO of AT&T Solutions.  "It is modular, scalable and
deployed globally.  We believe no other networking-management platform in the
world is as broad and sophisticated as our GEMS platform."
    The end-to-end management capabilities of GEMS span a broad range of
applications and devices involved in clients' networks, including PCs,
servers, PABXs, LANs/WANs, hub switches, routers, frame relay access devices
(FRADs), digital service units (DSUs) and multiplexers.
    GEMS produces seamless networking-management capabilities by integrating
proprietary software developed at AT&T Labs with best-in-class
enterprise-management software, including products from Microsoft, IBM,
Hewlett-Packard, Memco, Remedy, Oracle, Concord and other major vendors.
    Since its inception in 1995, AT&T Solutions has developed and implemented
seven major releases of GEMS, as well as dozens of feature enhancements.  Over
the last three years, AT&T Solutions has invested about $100 million in GEMS
and its expanding web of networking-management centers.
    GEMS runs more than 100 different applications and 250,000 lines of
"gluecode" on more than 100 servers for clients of AT&T Solutions' outsourcing
and outtasking services.  The newest GEMS upgrade gives clients web-based
access to a suite of client support services as well as real-time disaster
recovery and backup, network intrusion protections and an interface to the
rest of AT&T's systems and applications.

    Facts about IBM Global Services Service Delivery Center
    The IBM Global Services Service Delivery Center (SDC) in Columbus, Ohio,
will be significantly expanded to develop an IBM Technology Center of
Excellence to accommodate the data center, midrange server and help desk needs
of Banc One as part of the recently announced contract between the bank and
IBM Global Services.  This center will join the four existing IBM Global
Services SDC's.
    The SDC currently occupies 200,000 square feet of space, and provides
network and application processing services to a number of IBM Global Services
clients.  The Center's 137 current employees, whose largest customers are
Sears, Discover Card, and Integrion, will be joined by approximately 300
former Banc One employees.  The Center today utilizes over 4,500 MIPS for
current customers and will add almost 3,000 MIPS for Banc One, making it one
of the largest data processing facilities in the country.
    Expansion of the Center to meet Banc One's needs will be completed in late
1999, adding 110,000 square feet of space, including 47,000 square feet of
raised floor.  IBM Global Services anticipates the continued expansion of the
facility to accommodate Banc One's growth and new customer activity attracted
by the state-of-the-art facility and highly trained professional staff.  The
Center will provide educational and training opportunities not only for the
IBM staff, but all of the technical staffs of the Technology One Alliance
Partners, in the latest IBM technologies and processes to better serve the
bank.
    Mark Morin, general manager - global banking, finance and securities, IBM
Global Services, said, "Our newest SDC will become the commercial showcase
deployment of our Enterprise Systems Management (ESM) solution, which will
provide end to end systems management capability to Banc One to ensure its
technology supports its customers, business strategy and growth with improved
availability, capacity and responsiveness."
    Fundamentally, the IBM Tivoli based ESM Solution is the complete set of
processes, tools, and information that enables an organization to effectively
manage all of their Information Technology resources at a business level.
Traditionally, systems management and service levels have been viewed on a
technology component basis.  Today, it is common for a business function that
provides significant revenue to the bank to have multiple application
components that execute on every platform from mainframes to desktops.  The
fact that any one component is available 99.99% of the time is not important
if "in aggregate" the actual utility provided by the underlying business
application is not available to an end-user when that end-user requires it.
    The systems view provided by ESM will allow the bank to manage the
components that collectively form a business application as a total system,
viewing technology from the same perspective as it is viewed by the business.

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