About PSI

Platform Solutions, Inc. (PSI), is the first developer of a new generation of mainframe computers compatible with the broadest set of datacenter environments and operating systems, including IBM® z/OS®.

Founded with a vision of offering true choice in the selection of advanced new mainframe systems, PSI provides customers a new level of control over their IT investments and ultimate flexibility in aligning their existing and future enterprise computing resources with changing business priorities and technologies.

The new PSI mainframe computers are based on proven systems architecture acquired from Amdahl and industry-standard Intel® Itanium® 2 processor technology. This unique combination gives customers of PSI systems unequalled system and software cost advantages over proprietary mainframe computers. PSI systems are the first new generation mainframe computers that can run the z/OS® operating system along with Linux, UNIX® and Windows® simultaneously on the same system. This broad compatibility, along with breakthroughs in I/O virtualization, makes the new PSI mainframes ideal for bridging the proprietary mainframe world and today's increasingly open systems based environments.

Originally founded in 1999 by a core team of former Amdahl engineers, PSI raised its first round of venture funding in the Fall of 2003. PSI's premiere strategic and venture investors now include Blueprint Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Intel Capital, InterWest Partners, and Investcorp.

Additionally, the company is led by a world-class management team comprised of senior executives from IBM, and Amdahl Corporation who have decades of directly related experience in high-end enterprise computing, mainframe architecture design, open systems technologies, and high-transaction oriented applications.

Rich Heritage In Mainframes & Open Systems
The founding of PSI can be traced directly to Dr. Gene Amdahl, the legendary founder of Amdahl Corporation. While at IBM, he was the principle architect of the IBM System 360 series of mainframe computers, which is one of the greatest success stories in the computer industry and a precursor to IBM's mainframe success today.

Dr. Amdahl envisioned tackling increasingly higher-end computing tasks. In 1970 he left IBM and formed Amdahl Corporation to drive new innovation more rapidly into the mainframe market, and to present IBM a new type of competition. Rather than compete with a different architecture, Amdahl Corporation created an entirely new product category that offered customers a new choice and a novel value proposition. These new systems, offering superior price performance, fully supported all the same software available for the IBM mainframes. Customers literally could unplug an IBM machine and replace it with a new Amdahl system by simply plugging it in. The new Amdahl computers became known as "plug compatible machines."

Over the next quarter century, Amdahl and IBM competed aggressively, with Amdahl gaining as much as 20% of the worldwide mainframe market. In 1997, the company became a wholly owned subsidiary of Fujitsu, which had been an early investor.

In 1995 a team of Amdahl engineers, led by Ron Hilton, began collaborating with Intel Corporation on the system design of Intel's new 64-bit IA-64 microprocessor architecture. Several years later, as Amdahl was consolidating a number of its engineering operations, Mr. Hilton approached the company and proposed spinning out a startup specifically to design a new generation of mainframe computers compatible with the IBM z/OS. These new systems would incorporate the highly evolved Amdahl systems architecture and Intel Itanium 2 processor technology. PSI would add new features, compatibility and value.

Mr. Hilton and his team orchestrated the spinout of PSI in the Fall of 1998, acquiring from Amdahl a license to his group's previous work efforts and certain other assets in exchange for an equity interest in the new company. They believed the continued growth in mainframe computing, the rise in more powerful open systems technologies, and PSI's unequalled PCM insight and expertise would provide the new company a rare opportunity to meet customer's needs for true choice and flexibility in mainframe computing.

New Choice in Mainframe Computing
After 40 years on the corporate computing scene, the mainframe computer today remains the foundation of corporate data and applications. And, with steady increases in e-commerce and online transactions, the world's reliance on the mainframe is growing. It is estimated 60% of the world's mission-critical data today is managed on mainframe systems. According to industry figures, the growing global market for mainframe computers reached nearly $5 billion in 2004.

Everyday, CIOs and IT managers in enterprise datacenters balance support for legacy mainframe platforms against the need to make strategic investments in new technologies that provide increased business agility and cost efficiency. Resources are aligned to meet service level agreements; and, system integration projects are weighed against complex and time consuming migration efforts. The mainframe plays a critical role in these decisions.

Additionally, moving forward, the mainframe is ideally suited as the enterprise server solution in various companies' and analysts' visions of utility-like computing. However, with the exit from the market of all compatible mainframe computer providers in 2000, only a single provider of z/OS systems remains. This has left customers with no hardware alternatives to further maximize an operating system that approximately controls 60% of today's corporate data.

Now, PSI offers these customers a new choice that significantly reduces risk and provides investment protection: a new generation mainframe computer designed specifically to meet the most pressing needs of today's heterogeneous enterprise datacenters. The PSI systems provide enterprise computing customers the flexibility to share virtual enterprise resources across a common, industry standard system.

About PSI
PSI is the industry's first provider of a new generation of mainframe computers compatible with the broadest set of datacenter environments and operating systems, including the IBM z/OS operating system. Founded with a vision of offering true choice in the selection of advanced new mainframe systems, PSI provides customers a new level of control over their IT investments and ultimate flexibility in aligning their existing and future enterprise computing resources with changing business priorities and technologies. The Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company was founded in 1999 by a core team of former Amdahl engineers and is funded by world-class strategic and venture investors, including Blueprint Ventures, Goldman Sachs, Intel Capital, InterWest Partners, Investcorp, and Microsoft.