LOS ANGELES, Nov. 1, 2004 (PRIMEZONE) -- E Team, Inc., the proven, market-leading provider of collaborative software for crisis management, today announced that the E Team solution is available in a new "open systems release," which will run on the major industry standard relational database platforms such as IBM DB2, Microsoft SQL, and Oracle. This strategic move to open standards will allow public safety customers to share more information and data for inter/intra agency collaboration, thus supporting a critical tenet of the 9/11 report for information sharing within and among government agencies. It will also allow new and existing E Team customers to more easily integrate the system with their existing relational database software and utilize a standards-based application server. E Team plans to provide ongoing support for both the original Domino-based E Team system and this new platform release.
"E Team is the most comprehensive and widely proven crisis management solution available today, and we are excited to be able to offer customers a wider variety of product options, including utilization of industry standard relational database platforms," said Robert Torchon, E Team's Vice President of Engineering. "This new version of E Team has the same basic look and feel as the original application with added benefits, including improved data sharing, increased scalability, and facilitated integration with legacy systems."
E Team has been engaged in the design, development, and testing of the new product for over a year. It is an n-tier web-based application, deployed on a J2EE compliant web application server with a standard relational database back end. As with the original E Team system, client access to the application is through a standard web browser. Advantages of the new E Team architecture include:
-- Massive scalability - While E Team's Domino-based architecture
has proven highly scalable in numerous large-scale deployments,
web application server software is designed to handle even
greater numbers of simultaneous users.
-- Improved data sharing - With relational databases commonly
deployed in the industry, database information can now be shared
more easily.
-- Browser-based user administration - Users and user access rights
can be easily managed from a standard browser.
-- Extensibility - The addition of new features in the system is
facilitated.
-- Reliability - Redundancy and failover are inherent in the new
architecture.
-- Facilitated support - Customers will have more options for
supporting the new system, with a large base of in-house
expertise in web applications and relational databases available.
E Team plans to support both the original Domino-based and new platforms indefinitely. For existing customers who want assistance in moving onto the new architecture as part of their standard maintenance agreement, E Team will also provide a migration path and assistance via its Professional Services organization.
"Our customers have been driving us to become 'platform independent' for some time now. We listened to them and responded by making this very important R&D investment," said John Tullie, E Team's Vice President, Worldwide Sales. "We now provide options to suit everyone's needs. E Team will continue to offer and support the Domino-based version for those customers wanting to use the existing product. For others whose requirements and existing infrastructure dictate a relational DB2 or SQL database version of E Team, they now also have access to the industry's leading crisis management solution."
E Team will continue to bundle the IBM Lotus Domino system and ESRI's ArcIMS GIS software into its current pricing model for the Domino-based E Team system. Because most customers already have master licensing agreements in place with their software vendors, bundling the relational database system platform into the new solution is unnecessary. The new release will continue to offer ESRI GIS software as part of the standard product.
About E Team
Founded in 1998, E Team is a leading provider of crisis management software, serving public agencies of all levels and sizes, private entities, and non-profit organizations. E Team's collaborative software offers comprehensive functionality for the critical tasks of crisis management, enabling users to better prepare for, respond to, and recover from large-scale emergencies and everyday incidents. It is used in a wide variety of applications, including emergency management, homeland security, biodefense, business continuity, disaster preparedness and recovery, event management, and training and exercises. Proven time and again in real-world situations including Hurricanes Charley, Frances, and Ivan, the 2004 G8 Summit, Republican and Democratic National Conventions, 2004 Athens Summer Olympics, and New York City's response to 9/11, E Team's browser-based software links the key players in a response, allowing effective multi-agency, multi-group collaboration. E Team maintains strategic relationships with leading technology providers, including IBM, ESRI, Microsoft, Oracle, Unisys, Boeing, and TELUS Geomatics, and has worked with SAIC on a variety of projects. Visit www.eteam.com for additional information.