AMI Joins the Service Availability Forum™

Portland, Oregon - June 9, 2003 -  The Service Availability Forum™ (SAForum) today announced the addition of American Megatrends Inc. (AMI) to the list of participating industry leading communications and computing companies. AMI, a leading provider of storage and computing innovation worldwide, has joined the SA Forum as a contributing member.

"AMI brings additional expertise in high availability solutions and an understanding of developing interoperable interfaces that is crucial to the Forum’s efforts," said Timo Jokiaho, president of the Service Availability Forum. "Membership continues to grow as companies, like AMI, see opportunities to contribute to the SAForum’s efforts to deliver standards that facilitate rapid delivery of cost-effective, carrier-grade communications infrastructure equipment and applications."

By joining the Service Availability Forum, AMI lends its experience in building sophisticated products for remote management to help define the open hardware, firmware and software interface specifications for such products. AMI applies its MegaRAC technology to Chassis Management Modules to help telecom equipment providers build highly available and manageable telecom infrastructure platforms.

"AMI's goal has been to work with the industry to ensure inter-operability between functional modules built by multiple vendors, improving time-to-market, reducing overall test requirements and driving down the cost of equipment," said Subramonian Shankar, President of AMI. "The SAForum and AMI agree that the best solution requires the cooperation of, and collaboration between, Telecom Equipment Manufacturers (TEMs) and users."

In the past, proprietary technologies were seen as a means of competitive differentiation that help to protect sales margins. But today, the software and telecom industries are beginning to move from closed proprietary development to a more open environment in order to lower cost and reduce time-to-market. The SAForum is dedicated to developing and facilitating the adoption of open, carrier-grade platform and middleware interfaces that tie together all standards-based network equipment elements quickly and easily.

The SAForum Hardware Platform Interface (HPI) and SAForum Application Interface Specification (AIS) are now available to TEMs, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), Independent Software Vendors (ISVs), and Network Equipment Providers (NEPs). The SA Forum specifications will enable greater focus of design resources on innovation and product differentiating efforts. The SAForum HPI and AIS can be downloaded at http://www.saforum.org/specification.

About the Service Availability Forum
The Service Availability Forum is the industry body dedicated to developing specifications that facilitate the faster delivery of cost-effective, carrier-grade infrastructure equipment and applications. Created by industry leading communications and computing companies, the Forum’s specifications represent a crucial, missing piece of the COTS ecosystem model – open, carrier-grade platform and middleware interfaces that tie together all standards-based network equipment elements quickly and easily. Service Availability Forum membership offers the opportunity to take part in building the availability specifications for the future.

For more information about the Service Availability Forum, visit www.saforum.org.

About AMI
Founded in 1985, American Megatrends Inc. (AMI) has dedicated its resources to providing OEMs, resellers and systems integrators with leading edge computer technologies. Privately held, AMI is best known for its BIOS, but it also supplies state-of-the-art hardware, software and utilities to over 55 percent of today's high-tech manufacturers. AMI offers high-density motherboards, disk subsystems and innovative storage solutions. Headquartered in Atlanta, AMI has locations in the U.S. and throughout the world including Chennai, Munich , Seoul , Taipei and Tokyo to better serve its customers. For more information on AMI, its products or services, call 1-800-U-BUY-AMI or visit www.ami.com.