Press Release Cable & Wireless Germany releases OpenPKG as Open Source Cable & Wireless developed a new and unique form of cross-platform software installation Munich, January 11, 2002 - Cable & Wireless, the global telecommunications company, announced the availability of the OpenPKG 1.0 software. A flexible and powerful software packaging facility, OpenPKG eases the cross-platform installation and administration of Unix software. Consolidating different vendor approaches into a unified architecture, it serves system administrators of large networks previously burdened by non-conformant systems. OpenPKG leverages proven technologies like Red Hat Package Manager (RPM) and provides an additional system layer on top of the operating system. With OpenPKG, a new and unique method of software deployment took form. Open Source software is gaining ground in the whole IT and telecommunications business. Looking for long-term success, no telecommunications company can ignore Open Source solutions. Therefore, Cable & Wireless aligns itself with the strategies of its own partners like IBM, Compaq and Sun. "Serving hosting customers involves using Open Source software technologies, and OpenPKG is our contribution to this growing community", said Ottmar Schipper, Vice President of Cable & Wireless Germany/Austria. "We developed this product especially for companies which install and maintain a large set of heterogeneous Unix servers, for example other ISPs, software development companies or telecommunication companies." Applied across a variety of servers, OpenPKG can empower the enterprise with faster package installation and simplified maintenance. A system can exploit OpenPKG's logic to become more robust and free the administrator to attend other matters. OpenPKG is a software packaging facility for Unix computers, and targets the major server platforms. Solaris, Linux, and FreeBSD are fully supported, while NetBSD, OpenBSD, Tru64, HP/UX and others were also tested successfully. While internally based on RPM version 4, OpenPKG is a self-contained system with minimal dependencies (no RPM pre-installation required), and installs itself by means of a tricky bootstrapping procedure. OpenPKG eases and controls the management of a large or diverse base of software across one or more of its supported platforms. Highlights of OpenPKG * Based on Open Source technologies. * Portable across all major Unix platforms. * Minimum operating system intrusion. * Minimum overhead in software packaging. * Easy installation, updating and uninstallation of packages. * Over 200 software packages available. * Bundled with useful package pre-configurations. * Support for multiple system instances. * Abstracted run-command facility. The idea behind Ralf S. Engelschall, Team Leader Development, Cable & Wireless Germany, and principal author of other successful Open Source solutions like the Apache webserver's mod_ssl, expains the idea behind OpenPKG: "As server software grows increasingly complex, we need a standardised cross-platform deployment method which adapts to varying customer requirements. OpenPKG satisfies this without compromising flexibility. Additionally, there's simply less that can go wrong, because OpenPKG takes the pain away from server administration and makes applying upgrades or security patches a breeze." Christoph Schug, Team Leader Hosting, Cable & Wireless Germany, adds: "Beyond this, we work more efficiently with OpenPKG. Building custom servers is now a matter of hours instead of the usual week." OpenPKG is a project of the Development Team from Cable & Wireless Germany's Application Services division, and is a mature technology in production use. It is available world-wide from www.openpkg.org, for free. - ### - About Cable & Wireless Cable & Wireless is a major global telecommunications business with revenue of over £9 billion (US$14 billion) in the year to 31 March 2000 and customers in 70 countries. Cable & Wireless' focus for future growth is on IP (Internet Protocol) and data services and solutions for business customers. It is developing advanced IP networks and value-added services in the US, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region in support of this strategy. With the capability of its global IP infrastructure and its strength in key markets, Cable & Wireless holds a unique position in terms of global coverage and services to business customers. For more information about Cable & Wireless, go to www.cw.com.