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OnLine ToolWorks ANNOUNCES GENERAL RELEASE OF SmartBatch 2004

OnLine ToolWorks Corp announced its most recent release of SmartBatch 2004, an advanced Windows application automation and job batch scheduling solution.

New functionality in this release includes enhanced ease-of-use, scalability, distributed processing, load-balancing and fault-tolerance. The 100 percent native .NET implementation takes advantage of the .NET framework and other Microsoft technologies such as the Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (MSDE), Message Queuing and integrated role-based Windows security.

"We are delighted to see strong, specialized tools such as OnLine ToolWorks Corporation's SmartBatch 2004 that enable our customers to implement highly specialized, industry specific processes on a .NET foundation," said Ralph Young, West Region vice president of Microsoft Corp.

Customers can automate their applications using advanced scheduling options, job dependencies, status information, and history tracking. With the Enterprise Edition of SmartBatch 2004, customers can leverage idle computing resources with a load-balancing application Grid. Any computer in the Grid can be sent application activity. When activity is staged for processing, SmartBatch 2004 will determine which computer in the Grid has the most resources available. Computers can be added to or removed from the Grid for maintenance while processing on other computers continues. Other distributed options are available including the ability to run activity on all computers in a computer group simultaneously. More information on putting Grid computing to work in a commercial setting can be attained by attending Gt'04 (www.gt04.com), which is being held May 24-26 in Philadelphia.

With SmartBatch, e-gatematrix was able to address its batch job schedule problems. The company implemented the software at its Atlanta headquarters. "The DOS-based batch job schedule tool was very difficult to use," explained Charles Rice, e-gatematrix's Executive Vice President and CIO. "We required a batch scheduling tool that was superior in the monitoring of files and job dependencies and also provided robust restart recovery capabilities."

Customers achieve significant productivity gains in computing and personnel resources when using SmartBatch 2004. Continuous monitoring by application development or support personnel is time-consuming and prone to errors.

SmartBatch 2004 eliminates this manual process with advanced scheduling activities and built-in notifications to alert on-call staff to problems.