Opsware Announces Next Wave of Data Centre Automation with Opsware System 6 Product Family

Opsware Inc, the provider of IT Automation software, today announced Opsware System 6, the first integrated family of products for comprehensive Data Centre Automation. The suite represents a significant advancement in delivering Opswareís vision for automated management of whole applications within data centres. Opswareís vision spans broad application infrastructure requirements across servers, networks, software infrastructure, storage and business applications. As part of this announcement, the company today launched Opsware Server Automation System 6, which joins the already announced Opsware Network Automation System 6, Opsware Visual Application Manager, and The Opsware Network security service as major components of the Opsware System 6 product family.

Driven by the broad adoption of Internet technologies within enterprises, todayís IT organizations are challenged to manage applications that operate at a scale and complexity exponentially greater than that of even 7-10 years ago. Rather than being confined to single, large servers, todayís applications are distributed across the enterprise and geographic boundaries, frequently spanning many hundreds of servers, software components, network devices and storage systems. Furthermore, with the proliferation of Web services and similar technologies, applications integrate and intercommunicate with each other more than ever before, further complicating changes to any portion of the infrastructure. All of this has led to an explosion in IT costs and enormous application management complexity, with both budgets and service levels being hit hard. To address this problem, the Opsware System 6 product family automates across-the-board aspects of deploying and managing applications, and for the first time allows IT to obtain a unified picture of an applicationís complete presence within the enterprise. In so doing, the Opsware System 6 product family helps provide orders-of-magnitude reductions in cost and complexity while simultaneously driving dramatic improvements in productivity and performance.

Several strategic advances in Opsware System 6 make these improvements and cost savings possible. These include the ability to visually view all servers, networks, applications and all their interdependencies; the ability to drive change from an interactive visual view of the environment; automated software management for complex, multi-tiered applications; instant visibility into application and infrastructure compliance; and a real-time security automation service that identifies and remediates vulnerabilities and compliance issues automatically.

ìOpsware System 6 provides a new breakthrough in Data Centre Automation that enables automation at the application level versus just at the infrastructure level,î said Tim Howes, Chief Technology Officer at Opsware. ìToday we are unveiling new products that provide deeper server and network automation, as well as the first solution to provide an integrated approach to server, software and network management including affecting change from a visual view of the environment.î

Our strategic investment in Opsware’s Data Center Automation software is critical to optimising service delivery and providing the highest quality IT operations to our global customer base, said Neil Sproston, Manager Managed Operations, at Atos Origin, an international information technology services company. The breakthrough server automation capabilities in Opsware Server Automation System 6 will provide Atos Origin with dramatic improvements in productivity, performance and cost savings. This is essential for meeting the fluctuating demands of our customers and accelerating innovation across our IT environment.

In the area of server automation, the new Opsware Server Automation System 6, available early second half this year, provides key new capabilities that ease management of servers and software including:

Audit & auto-remediation across the full range of server and software configurations to ensure compliance with corporate and security standards

A compliance dashboard for executive-level, at-a-glance visibility into server, software and application configuration and regulatory compliance

Breakthrough software management capabilities that enable deployment and configuration management of complex, multi-tiered applications

An entirely redesigned interface to ensure easy management of large IT environments consisting of thousands of servers distributed across multiple locations

A comprehensive policy framework that enables best practice capture and standards setting across software, patches, and application configurations

Integration with the new Opsware Network Automation System 6 to provide visibility into dependencies between servers and network devices, automatically resolve network-server configuration mismatches, and share change history information for quick isolation of application problems

Also included in Opsware System 6 is the recently announced Opsware Network Automation System 6, Opsware Visual Application Manager and The Opsware Network security service.

Opsware Network Automation System 6 provides the first proactive network change and configuration management solution that focuses on preventing non-compliant changes from being propagated into the network environment.

Opsware Visual Application Manager is a new discovery and application mapping product that renders a complete picture of all servers, software, and network elements and their interdependencies. From this visual interactive view, IT can gain an instant in-depth understanding of the state of the environment, execute change actions and manage potential change conflicts.

The Opsware Network, a subscription service that provides ongoing updates of security alerts and compliance policies, has been expanded to work with Opsware Server Automation System. Previously the service only covered network devices managed by Opsware Network Automation System.

In laying out its roadmap for comprehensive Data Centre Automation, Opsware defines integrated server, network and storage automation as critical to ultimately delivering complete application automation and management. By automating all critical infrastructure in the data centre and the key components that power todayís Web application architectures, Opsware will lead the way in enabling IT organisations to automate the management of their globally, distributed applications.