Opsware Introduces Network Automation System 4.5
New capabilities for complex distributed environments accelerates adoption of award-winning NAS
ORLANDO, FLA., -- October 17, 2005 -- Opsware Inc., a leading provider of IT automation and utility computing software, today introduced Network Automation System (NAS) 4.5, offering a new set of capabilities for managing the largest and most complex distributed IT environments. NAS 4.5 now provides tighter integration between disparate IT systems and sophisticated automation capabilities that deliver greater control over network management. The advanced capabilities in NAS 4.5 enable customers to reduce costs and maximize efficiencies, while providing an automated infrastructure that eases the management of service-based IT models such as service oriented architectures (SOAs) and utility computing.
As enterprise IT continues to increase in complexity with over 39 million network devices installed worldwide, organizations are demanding a greater level of control and visibility over their network infrastructure. NAS 4.5 builds upon its award-winning capabilities to provide powerful network automation features including intelligent auto-discovery, policy prioritization and risk assessment, a new Web Services API and JMS Connector for quicker and more powerful integrations, and internationalization to support Opsware’s growth in Asia Pacific and EMEA. These features deliver superior value to enterprise IT by advancing automation of high priority IT initiatives including compliance, policy management, and improved service quality.
Gartner's Hype Cycle for IT Operations Management report (July 20, 2005) states, “Network device configuration management has primarily been a manual process involving typing commands into vendor-specific command line interfaces or creating homegrown scripts to ease retyping requirements. Little consideration has been given to rigorous change management or disaster recovery rollback processes.”
Opsware's Network Automation System addresses this issue head on by automating all the tasks that are error-prone and typically done manually. Automation is proving to increase network uptime significantly and improve overall quality of operations.
New features in NAS 4.5 include:
Intelligent Auto-Discovery: One of the biggest challenges with auto-discovery of network devices in large environments is that devices have multiple interfaces each of which shows up in discovery reports as a separate device. NAS 4.5 intelligently uses heuristic rules to automatically identify devices with multiple interfaces and then choose the primary management IP for each device. With NAS 4.5, customers dramatically improve the accuracy of their information and virtually eliminate the manual reconciliation required with traditional discovery tools.
New Web Services API and JMS Connector: NAS 4.5 introduces a new Web Services API and JMS Connector to facilitate deeper and quicker integration with ticketing, monitoring and other IT systems. These two-way integrations are critical to customers because they enable true, closed-loop configuration and change management.
Policy Prioritization and Automated Risk Assessment: Enterprise environments can have hundreds or thousands of compliance policies to administer. Traditionally, users must manually sort through each policy and violation to determine the best course of action. NAS 4.5 automatically prioritizes violations based on a policy’s risk rating and can automatically remediate critical violations to bring devices back into compliance.
Opsware NAS automates more than 500 network devices types from over 30 vendors, and has won every competitive review over the last year and in 2004. Opsware Network Automation System 4.5 is available immediately.
About Opsware Inc.
Opsware Inc. is a leading IT automation and utility computing software company. The growth of the Internet is driving a shift from client/server computing to Web architecture. With this shift comes an overwhelming proliferation of servers, networking devices, and applications, creating massive complexity that makes an automated IT model a necessity. Opsware automates the complete IT lifecycle and delivers utility computing by enabling IT to automatically provision, patch, configure, secure, change, scale, audit, recover, consolidate, migrate, and reallocate servers, network devices and applications. For more information on Opsware Inc., please visit our Web site at http://www.opsware.com
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Opsware is a service mark and trademark of Opsware Inc. All other product names, service marks, and trademarks mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners.
This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding the benefits and capabilities of our Opsware Network Automation System 4.5. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from these statements, including the risk that the assumptions underlying our current business strategy may change, that our experience operating as a software company is limited, and that the product may not perform as described. More information about these and other factors that could affect our business and financial results is included in our Form 10-K filed with the SEC on April 15, 2005 under the headings "Risk Factors" and "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” and the Forms 10-Q and 8-K that we file during the fiscal year.