Telos, ZDS ship dual Pentiums to Bosnia

Telos Corp. and Zenith Data Systems are shipping dual-Pentium 120 MHz servers, one of the most powerful PC-based servers available on a federal contract, to one of the most mission-critical users in the Defense Department: the headquarters of the Army's 1st Armored Division in Tuzla, Bosnia.

Not only will the 1st Armored Division users get advanced technology, they will also get a deal, according to Ed Williams, Telos' senior vice president for network integrated solutions. Telos is offering the high-powered ZDS servers through the Army's Small Multiuser Computer (SMC) II contract. "We originally offered servers with Pentium 90s on the contract but last month upgraded the processors to 120s at no cost to the Army."

Williams added that Telos introduced an even more powerful server to SMC II late last month: a ZDS machine featuring a 166 MHz chip available in single-, dual- and quad-processor configurations.

The contract's base price for a single-chip 120 MHz server runs at roughly $3,600, while a single-chip 166 MHz server costs roughly $7,600, Williams said.

William Lidster, the Heidelberg, Germany-based ZDS representative who handles the U.S. Army Europe, said that in addition to the five Pentium 120 servers slated for shipment to Tuzla, another nine servers will be installed at U.S. National Support Element bases at Kaposvar and Tazar, Hungary, "and I will be there this week to help install them."

Besides the SMC II shipments, ZDS last month delivered another six dual-Pentium 120 MHz servers for Operation Joint Endeavor through a NATO contract, according to Pat Gallagher, ZDS' sales vice president.

"We've done a lot of business with NATO on this operation," Gallagher said.

Williams said the bulk of orders Telos has received to date on SMC II have been to support U.S. forces in Bosnia. "We've done about a million dollars in business already, most of it from Bosnia, and we are turning the orders around in about 20 days." He said the rapid upgrades to the servers available on SMC II are the result of a deliberate strategy "to keep this contract on the cutting edge of technology.... That's why we did not even bother with the 133 but went directly to the 166. We want to establish SMC as the premier networking infrastructure contract."

Army Runs Exchange

Lt. Col. William Ylinen, chief of automation for V Corps, the parent command of the 1st Armored Division, said the ZDS Pentium processors installed in Hungary will feature another bit of cutting-edge technology: Release 1.0 of Microsoft Corp.'s Exchange.

"At the same time Microsoft officially introduces Exchange, we will be running it in support of Operation Joint Endeavor," Ylinen said.

The installation of Exchange 1.0 marks an evolution, not a revolution, according to Spec. 4 Rick Phillips of the V Corps automation shop—who Ylinen called "one of the smartest people in the world about Exchange"—because the command has been running a beta version for more than a year. Phillips, an Army computer analyst, said he found even the beta version of Exchange easier to work with than MS-Mail.

The Pentium installations in Bosnia and Hungary, Ylinen said, are part of an ongoing effort to provide advanced, commercial office automation and e-mail technology to V Corps users, an effort that has paid off in meeting the needs of top commanders.

"The Army is a high-technology corporation, and commercial off-the-shelf is key to meeting our technology needs," Ylinen said.