IRVINE, Calif., April 25, 2005 (PRIMEZONE) -- Vision Solutions, the industry standard in eServer High Availability, today announced its results for year-end 2004, marking significant expansion of its channel, growth in key markets, the signing of long-term contracts with strategic customers, and posting a third straight year of profitability.
"Overall, 2004 was a great year for Vision, with significant advances in all areas of the business. We grew the channel both in terms of numbers and profitability, we grew large accounts and expanded our SMB presence and we fostered strong alliances that drove added value in the channel," said Alan Arnold, President of Vision. "We also delivered solid technology to round out support for all the iSeries operating platforms and drove a very significant revenue amount for IBM."
Arnold continued, "Our value proposition continues to focus on listening to customers and delivering best of breed technology, services and support in close cooperation with IBM in all geographies worldwide."
Channel sales grew to more than 90% of Vision's business in 2004, which was bolstered by the signing of key agreements with major players, including Agilysys, one of the largest Tier-1 IBM distributors and services company in North America. The Company signed a long-term technology and services agreement with HSBC, IBM's largest iSeries customer worldwide and was chosen as the High Availability vendor of choice by IBM's Business Continuity Recovery Services.
Vision's overall business with IBM was very strong again in 2004, where the Company directly influenced more than 950 server footprint worldwide driving iSeries business exceeding $175,000,000.
Vision further strengthened its management team with the appointment of industry heavyweights including Steve Massey as the new EVP of Worldwide Sales and Henry Martinez as Vice President of Engineering. The Vision product set was further enhanced with the release of several new additions to the ORION family of products, including a new Windows offering, support for open source Linux replication and the introduction to beta of ORION for AIX; rounding out the eServer strategy.
"Vision is committed to being the best solution for the IBM eServer and continues to invest over 20% of revenues in research and development. The result of that is ORION, the first and most complete multi-platform high availability offering for the IBM eServer," said Nicolaas Vlok, Chief Executive Officer of Vision Solutions. "Today we have a solution set that is extremely strong and that positions Vision not only as the leader in this space but really as the standard in eServer high availability."
Vision was recognized by the industry in 2004 with numerous awards including iSeries News Apex Editor's Choice Awards, Software & Information Industry Association's Codie Awards and American Electronic Association's Technology Awards for ORION and ORION Data Integrator. The company ranked as the 15th largest software company in Southern California and in the top-300 of the largest software companies in the worlds in Software Magazine's Software 500 Listings.
About Vision Solutions
Vision Solutions, headquartered in Irvine, Calif., is the industry standard in eServer High Availability providing software, services and support solutions for managing a company's mission-critical applications and data. With more than 1,850 customers and 11,000 licenses around the world, the company works closely with a worldwide network of channel partners supporting virtually every industry with its world-class solutions: Visualize(tm), Vision Suite(r), ORION(tm) and ORION Integrator. Vision Solutions is an IBM Premier Business Partner and an IBM High Availability Business Partner. Vision Solutions is a member of the publicly traded IDION group of companies (JSE:IDI). For more information on Vision Solutions, please visit the company's website at www.visionsolutions.com.