Avantis Announces Europe's Largest Contract For CD Servers

OEM Deal with Viglen Will Supply Over 900 Primary Schools with CD/DVD Servers Across Northern Ireland

Avantis, the leading manufacturer of specialised CD/DVD network server appliances to the education sector, has announced its largest ever contract win to supply primary schools across Northern Ireland with over 900 multimedia CD/DVD servers in a deal worth in excess of 2 million.

The contract win, an OEM deal with Learning Technology plc, the parent company of Viglen Limited ('Viglen), forms a component of the contract won by Viglen worth nearly 50 million as a National Grid for Learning (NGfL) Managed Service provider for primary schools in Northern Ireland. The NGfL is a Government initiative to develop information and communication technology (ICT) to raise standards in education.

Our expertise lies in the education sector enabling pupils and teachers to easily access the latest curriculum content on CD and DVD," commented Dr Richard Theo, Managing Director of Avantis. The contract with Learning Technology endorses the calibre of our solution and confirms Avantis status as a key vendor to the UK education sector for ICT."

Avantis currently has 30% of the UK market for CD/DVD servers.

Avantis CDserve+ technology was selected to provide the curriculum content delivery solution for each of the 903 primary schools in the Northern Ireland project. The solution will provide fast, shared access to some 120 different educational software titles across the school network, for all pupils and teachers.

Dr Richard Theo continued, Effective learning via the Internet requires cost-effective and accessible broadband access -- neither of which are widely available in most parts of the UK. Networked DVD/CD-ROM content therefore becomes an attractive choice for enabling safe and interactive elearning within a school."

We are committed to the education sector and have awarded this contract to Avantis who produce innovative ICT solutions, but also share our dedication to excellence in education," said Bordan Tkachuk, Chief Executive of Learning Technology plc. Partnering with Avantis, we can raise the standards of education by providing pupils and teachers with an effective learning tool and a sound investment for the future."
- ends -

About the Avantis CDserve+

CDserve+ is the entry-level solution in the Avantis multimedia server range. Optimised for performance and reliability at an affordable price, these servers are installed in hundreds of primary and secondary schools across the UK, far outweighing the success of any other available CD sharing solution.

Based on Avantis' award winning legacy CDserve software, CDserve+ offers the ultimate solution for sharing multimedia over a network. Avantis servers are the only products to guarantee compatibility with all formats of CD, including multimedia formats such as Video CD, Photo CD and Audio CD, and even formats that cannot normally be networked or copied. Users access the CDs with the aid of Avantis' Multimedia Virtual Drive technology - which creates 'virtual' CD-ROM drives on the workstation. DVD support is available as a software upgrade for CDserve+, so access to all formats of DVD is now possible too!

CDserve+ is based on hard disk drive technology, offering far superior performance and reliability to CD towers, libraries or jukeboxes. Accessing a CDserve+ hard disk across a network generally takes 10 milliseconds or less, compared to the nearly 100 milliseconds required for optical server solutions.

CDserve+ is available in six different capacity models, ranging in size from 7 to 75 CDs. CDserve+ class servers can now also be expanded in capacity, so future upgrade requirements can be easily accommodated.

About Avantis

Established in 1995, Avantis is a rapidly growing ICT (information and communication technology) company dedicated to the development of CD and DVD networking solutions. Avantis pioneered the use of hard disk technology to store and distribute multimedia content in 1996 and was the first vendor to launch a hard disk based, network attached storage (NAS) CD/DVD server into the UK market.

From headquarters near Cardiff, South Wales, Avantis operates through a network of exclusive distributors in the UK, Europe and the U.S. Today, Avantis is estimated to have 30% share of the UK CD/DVD Server market and 9% of the European market. Avantis has an installed base of over 4,000 customers in the UK alone.

For more information about Avantis, please refer to the Avantis web site at http://www.avantisworld.com

Contact:
David Rowlands
Multimedia PRM
enquiries@multimediapr.co.uk
Tel:+44 (0)1291 626 200