ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN RAILROADS AND GE INFORMATION SERVICES SIGN ELECTRONIC COMMERCE OUTSOURCING DEAL NEW YORK, April 27 /PRNewswire/AsiaNet/ -- Today, at Gartner Group'sInternet & Electronic Commerce Expo, the Association of American Railroads(AAR) and GE Information Services (GE) announced that AAR has outsourced itsRAILINC data center operations and managed network services to GE. RAILINCprovides electronic commerce support to process more than 4,000,000transactions per day, including settlements, bills of lading, ship notices,equipment tracing, rates, and other business transactions between 500 memberrailroad companies of the AAR. GE Information Services will now manage RAILINC's data center operations which include hardware operations and mainframe processing activities. Also, as part of the contract, GE Information Services will launch a new message switch capability that willbecome the standard way to exchange mission critical business documents forthe rail industry in the U.S. in a real-time fashion. "GE is proud to further strengthen our relationship with the rail industryby assuming responsibility for the EDI data center operations for RAILINCE andthe Association of American Railroads," said Harvey F. Seegers, president andCEO of GE Information Services . "GE has a long heritage of delivering state-of-the-art technology to the railroad industry to help them improve boththeir bottom and top lines." " We are very excited by this new technology alliance with GE InformationServices , because it will enable RAILINC to reduce costs while expanding ourservice offerings to the railroad companies, who in turn will be able to create greater efficiencies for rail shippers across the nation," said JimGardner of RAILINC. "GE demonstrated the commitment to make the technology transition happen while maintaining the required levels of quality andcustomer service." By the end of second quarter this year, GE Information Services will havemoved all RAILINC computer and network operations to GE's Ohio Super Center inBrook Park , Ohio. GE will operate, manage and monitor the RAILINC proprietary and third party EDI software, equipment and their wide areanetwork on behalf of RAILINC. GE will also provide mainframe processing,technical support, capacity planning, production control, and wide areanetwork management for the RAILINC applications. The RAILINC applications arecentral to the twenty-four hours a-day, seven-days-a-week operation of therail industry. RAILINC's services support the real-time exchange of businessdocuments (settlements, bills of lading, ship notices, equipment trading,rates, etc.) between the railroads, their customers, customs, and other thirdparties in the rail industry. In addition, GE will be developing a new message switch as the backbonesoftware for electronic commerce in the rail industry. This innovative use ofmessaging technology will further advance RAILINC's industry-leading use of real-time EDI documents between trading partners. "We are proud that RAILINC had the confidence in GE to turn the operationof such a large scale, 24x7, mission critical data center over to us," saidOtto Kumbar, vice president of the new RAILINC division at GE InformationServices. GE Information Services won the contract in a competitive bid process. Noother terms of the contract were disclosed. GE Information Services internetworks companies with their businesspartners through the power of electronic commerce. As the experts in globalelectronic commerce, GE delivers a full suite of solutions that streamline theextended supply chain, including Electronic Data Interchange, messaging gateways, extranets, electronic catalogues, and electronic marketplaces. GEInformation Services manages the world's largest electronic community of morethan 90,000 trading partners. GE Information Services is one of the twelve key businesses of the General Electric Company, USA and is headquarted inRockville, MD , USA. SOURCE GE Information Services -0- 04/27/98 /CONTACT: John Berry of GE Information Services , at I+EC Booth 430, or301-340-4224, or [email protected]/ /Company News On-Call:http://www.prnewswire.com or fax, 800-758-5804, ext. 306146/