It's Another First - CENIC's CalREN-2 Welcomes IBM

Oakland, California, April 12, 1999: The Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California (CENIC) welcomes its first industrial partner to connect to CalREN-2, the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose, California. CENIC is developing and implementing CalREN-2, the nation's most advanced computing and communications network infrastructure to advance research and education.

California's major research and academic universities founded CENIC and started the CENIC's Associates program to engage commercial research partners. As a Partner in CENIC Associates' program, IBM is a key participant in CENIC projects. IBM plans to develop advanced applications for education, science and business in collaboration with CENIC and Internet2 universities. IBM's use of CalREN-2 will play a key part in the development and testing of advanced Internet technologies. CalREN-2 also will serve as a testbed for future e-business applications.

The CENIC Associates program offers every qualified California company the opportunity to collaborate with CENIC in pursuit of the goal of providing the most advanced network services for research and teaching.

"Collaboration between universities and private corporations made California the world leader in information technology. Advanced services networks like CalREN-2 can play a key role in streamlining such collaborations in the future," said M. Stuart Lynn, CENIC's chairman and University of California associate vice-president for information resources and communications.

About CENIC

CENIC is a not-for-profit corporation formed by the California Institute of Technology, the California State University, Stanford University, the University of California, and the University of Southern California to advance the use of communications technology in research and education at California's universities. Its Associates include Cisco Systems and IBM.

CENIC operates CalREN-2 for qualified public and private sector institutions for research and learning purposes. CalREN-2 is California's segment of the national Internet2 initiative that links over 100 of the nation's leading universities. CalREN-2 is partially funded by the National Science Foundation.

More information is available at the following web sites:
http://www.cenic.org
http://www.ibm.com/research