Novell To Provide Net Acceleration Service for Franco-German Forum on European Information Society

Novell, Inc., the leading provider of Net services software, announced today that it is providing Net acceleration services for the Franco-German Forum on the European Information Society. The Forum, organised jointly by the Robert Schuman, Friedrich Ebert and Jean Jaurès Foundations, will be opened by Joschka Fischer, German Vice-Chancellor and Minister of Foreign Affairs. The event will be attended by some 100 leading industrialists, journalists, academics and politicians directly involved with the development of the Information Society.

The general public will be able to follow this high-profile event via the Internet. Novell, in conjunction with Fujitsu-Siemens Corporation, One World Telecom, Akamai and Mannesmann Arcor, will provide live Internet streaming of the Panel discussion on the first day and edited highlights of the remaining debates and presentations. The content of the Forum will stay on the Web site for 30 days. (www.dff2000.org in German and www.ffa2000.org in French)

To accelerate the delivery of the streaming media content, Novell and Fujitsu-Siemens Corporation will provide caching appliances based on the Novell Internet Caching System which support media streaming to dramatically improve the speed and efficiency of delivering Net content over Akamai's Free Flow delivery service. Mannesmann Arcor will provide the access bandwidth and One World Telecom will coordinate these internet-related activities and will be hosting the streamed content on its server in Germany. This joint project demonstrates how this new technology will enable interested parties from all around the world to follow these developments.

"Clearly, this is an excellent example of Net services software at work," said Chris Hemingway, director, Net Content and appliance sales, Novell, Inc. "Working with our partners we are pleased that our Internet Caching Service technology has been chosen to accelerate the delivery of this important Forum over the Internet. This will allow for people worldwide to participate as if they were actually in attendance."

"The Franco-German Forum gives us the opportunity to present Arcor as an important partner to the voice, data, Internet and eBusiness sectors on issues of security, flexibility and service," said Barbara Kögler, Head of Corporate Communications at Mannesmann Arcor. "The incorporation of the server farm allows us to show how easy, cost-effective and secure electronic dataprocessing is for corporates and institutions with Arcor - Colocated Housing."

Britta Schassa, European Marketing Director for One World Telecom added, "For One World Telecom, this project is the ideal vehicle to demonstrate our spectrum of services to the wider European audience. We are very pleased that the content of this important European event can be made available worldwide through our technology."

All companies will exhibit at the event to demonstrate their high-tech capabilities.

Event Details:
The Franco-German Forum on the European Information Society will be held at the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Berlin on 27 and 28th October 2000.