AT&T Offers Enhanced Application Performance Management Capabilities for Businesses

March 23, 2005; 11:24 AM

March 23, 2005 - BEDMINSTER, N.J. - (HostReview) -  AT&T today announced it is expanding its ability to help businesses manage the performance of their applications. Specifically, AT&T will monitor and manage the performance, reliability and security of key business applications, such as e-commerce, e-business solutions, and enterprise application infrastructure.

The new service will help companies better manage their networked applications and may lower IT costs, while delivering more predictable business performance and integrated management across an enterprise's networks, systems and applications. It combines AT&T's global Internet protocol (IP) network, 26 Internet Data Centers worldwide and its industry-leading enterprise management system with business application management provided by Totality, a leading remote managed services provider.

Customer visibility and control over their networked applications will be enabled by AT&T's BusinessDirect® portal, which recently was recognized by the Yankee Group for providing customers with the strongest online support and service experience in the industry.

"AT&T continues to bring to market new capabilities that ensure that our customers' systems are operating at peak performance," said Mike Jenner, AT&T Hosting Vice President. "With this new offer, businesses with an e-commerce web site will be guaranteed performance on their business transactions, which will ensure that their customers always receive the high-quality, timely experience they've come to expect from leading brands."

Businesses like Cabela's Incorporated, a leading specialty retailer and the nation's largest direct marketer of hunting, fishing, camping and related outdoor merchandise, has been able to bolster its corporate image, improve its visibility and improve its time-to-market by applying the AT&T-Totality application management solution to its web site - www.cabelas.com.

"AT&T and Totality have provided Cabela's with an end-to-end managed infrastructure that ensures our corporate image will be less likely to be tarnished by service-impacting outages to our e-commerce platform," said Larry Popps, Cabela's director of Management Information Systems.  "Cabela's also enjoys increased visibility, and increased time to market and flexibility through the highly scalable and secure infrastructure that the AT&T-Totality solution provides us."

Hyatt Hotels Corporation is using the combined solution to fully manage applications that support its Hyatt.com interface, online reservations and interactive loyalty program experience.  AT&T has a long-standing relationship as Hyatt's primary networking services provider, and recently renewed a three-year contract to host Hyatt.com at AT&T's Chicago-area Internet Data Center (IDC).

"The AT&T-Totality application management solution was exactly what we were looking for and needed to ensure our website, Hyatt.com, achieves maximum up time," said Joan Lowell, vice president of electronic distribution at Hyatt Hotels Corporation. "AT&T and Totality provide Hyatt with reliable support for our hosting environment and ongoing maintenance deploys. Together, they provide the full web site management we need to meet the business and technical requirements for hosting our web site."

AT&T continues to design and manage applications for optimal performance, in addition to supporting life-cycle services — from implementation to production and upgrades.  This new offer will provide service level agreements for availability, reliability and security requirements, and feature integrated e-bonding of trouble tickets that allow customers of the service to see the progress of trouble ticket reports and resolution through AT&T BusinessDirect.

"By joining forces, AT&T and Totality are able to provide best of breed managed services that meet the IT needs of our customers," said Kelly Rodriques, CEO of Totality.  "Together, we are able to establish a new precedent for IT management, giving customers access to an enriched set of services that address even the most complex IT management challenges."

"AT&T's Hosting solutions help enterprise customers simplify the deployment and management of their business application infrastructure," said Melanie Posey, Research Director at IDC. "Integrating the customer's applications and infrastructure into the AT&T global network allows businesses to achieve improved performance management, supported by transaction level SLAs."

AT&T BusinessDirect combines service management and support reporting tools into a single, secure extranet site.  It provides users with increased visibility and cost control over their network performance and investments, and it supports an average of 2.7 million transactions per month from more than 620,000 users.  Approximately 43% of AT&T's maintenance requests and more than 37% of business orders originate electronically.

Customers derive value from the simple and intuitive means AT&T BusinessDirect provides to support and manage their network infrastructure.  The portal enables users to run their operations more efficiently and to place greater emphasis on the business-critical activities necessary to deliver consistent service to their own customer base.
More information on AT&T hosting and application management services is available at www.att.com/business.

About AT&T
For more than 125 years, AT&T (NYSE "T") has been known for unparalleled quality and reliability in communications.  Backed by the research and development capabilities of AT&T Labs, the company is a global leader in local, long distance, Internet and transaction-based voice and data services.

AT&T ‘Safe Harbor'
The foregoing contains "forward-looking statements" which are based on management's beliefs as well as on a number of assumptions concerning future events made by and information currently available to management. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which are not a guarantee of performance and are subject to a number of uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside AT&T's control, that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements. For a more detailed description of the factors that could cause such a difference, please see AT&T's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. AT&T disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. This information is presented solely to provide additional information to further understand the results of AT&T.

About Totality
Totality is a leading 24x7 remote managed services provider for business-critical applications and infrastructure. Totality delivers Guaranteed Business Outcomes (GBOs) through line-of-business focused Service Level Agreements that provide customers with a high degree of performance and business process visibility. Totality manages applications and infrastructure for blue-chip companies such as American Airlines, Best Buy, EquiLend, Scholastic, The Body Shop and The Sharper Image. Systems under management account for over $3 Billion (B2C) and over $1 Trillion (B2B) in annual revenue and transactions.

Founded in 1999, Totality is a privately held company, headquartered in San Francisco, California with offices in New York, Chicago and Dallas. For more information, visit www.totality.com.

Totality ‘Safe Harbor'
The foregoing contains "forward-looking statements" which are based on management's beliefs as well as on a number of assumptions concerning future events made by and information currently available to management. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which are not a guarantee of performance and are subject to a number of uncertainties and other factors, many of which are outside Totality's control, that could cause actual results to differ materially from such statements.