Novadigm, Inc., a leading provider of adaptive software change and configuration management solutions, today announced significant enhancements to its...

Novadigm, Inc., a leading provider of adaptive software change and configuration management solutions, today announced significant enhancements to its Radia® Server Management solution to address one of the biggest challenges facing enterprise IT organizations: effectively managing the constantly changing software configurations for data center servers. The enhanced Radia solution enables IT organizations to integrate and automate operational processes for reliably provisioning, updating and patching the increasing complex server environments that their businesses depend upon.

“Novadigm is already the recognized leader in managing server software with proven success in production at customer sites worldwide,” said George Kellar, vice president of marketing for Novadigm. “With these data center enhancements we are once again raising the bar in providing customer value through unprecedented levels of automation, integration and cost-effectiveness. IT organizations can now provision and manage servers in the data center and anywhere in the world with greaterspeed, security and reliability.”

According to Paul Mason, group vice president of infrastructure software for industry research firm, International Data Corporation (IDC): “Building a service-centric computing environment requires that IT support more-streamlined, agile business processes, while continuing to provide expected IT services by automating data center and server management. Novadigm is a pioneer and leader in this area, and its unique management approach using a policy-based desired-state model is particularly powerful as it helps speed provisioning and ensures configuration compliance even at large scale.”

Novadigm has been recognized by IDC as the revenue share leader in the server provisioning and management software market. IDC's February 2003 "Worldwide Server Provisioning and Management Software Forecast and Analysis, 2002-2007,” which forecasts growth for data center and distributed server market at a compound annual growth rate of 59.4%, indicates Novadigm "has long been a technology leader," and cites the successful implementation of many Novadigm customers for server provisioning and management "in some cases to manage 5,000 or more servers."

One of Novadigm’s enterprise customers, 7-Eleven, relies on the Radia solution to manage 5,800 servers, helping to support business strategies by improving server availability and reducing administrative costs. "The ability to effectively manage servers is important to 7-Eleven's success," said Keith Morrow, CIO, 7-Eleven, Inc. "With Novadigm Radia, we have a single, comprehensive software management solution — one-change control process — addressing our needs, and we can realize greater efficiencies in staff training and costs."

Data Center and Distributed Server Management with the Radia Solution Novadigm’s Radia Server Management solution provides comprehensive management of operating systems, applications, and patches across Windows, UNIX and Linux platforms throughout the entire software lifecycle. At the core of the solution is Radia’s adaptive configuration technology with its imbedded intelligence and reusable “building-block” configuration modules, which automate the management of the operating system, application and patch software “layers” for any number of data center or distributed servers. It also provides seamless integration of configuration activities across the software layers for each server, enabling a significantly higher degree of IT management process automation. Unique capabilities of the Radia solution include:

Desired-State Configuration Management. Radia’s unique desired-state process can quickly and automatically configure any or all of the operating system, application and patch software layers. As software versions, processing requirements and server configurations change, already-deployed servers can be automatically updated or reprovisioned to the new desired configuration state, and new or repurposed servers can be automatically provisioned with the updated configurations. Policy-Based Configuration. Radia’s policy-driven processes allow IT administrators to define configuration policies in external policy stores, including Microsoft Active Directory, IBM SecurWay, and Sun ONE Directory Server, to control operating system, application and patch configurations for different servers or server types. Subsequent changes to policies cause the right software to be automatically installed or updated for all deployed, new or repurposed servers.
Scalable Infrastructure. Radia’s "n-tier" highly scalable architecture, with comprehensive bandwidth optimization capabilities such as multicasting and distributed caching, enables the management of very large numbers of servers and applications across complex global operations, with administration from any location.

Configuration Repository. Radia’s configuration repository contains all of the information necessary to manage operating system, application and patch software, and includes detailed software, hardware and configuration data for managed servers.

This comprehensive collection of configuration data provides visibility and control over existing and planned server software configurations, and allows comprehensive impact analysis and reporting for IT assets. Secure Role-based Administration. Radia’s Management Portal provides role-based workflow tasks and dialogs for consistent and secure server administration and operations. The Portal can automate the discovery of existing or newly installed servers on the network, and the provisioning and updating of operating system, patch and application software on discovered servers.

Key Enhancements to the Radia Server Management Solution The Radia Server Management solution has been enhanced to provide even greater levels of control and automation for data center servers through: Increased Automation of IT Operations – Increased automation enables coordination of configuration management processes spanning data centers, servers, and load balancers and across the entire software stack. Dynamic scheduling and sequencing of configuration activities enables automated provisioning as well as complete life-cycle management of business-critical servers. Automation of operations such as quiescing, starting and stopping of application and database services as well as reboot management is provided through "production-safe" interaction with load balancers, application subsystems and operating system services.

Streamlined Configuration Management of Data Center Applications -New application templates enable rapid installation and adaptive configuration management of common web, middleware, directory and database server applications, such as Apache, Microsoft IIS, BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, Microsoft Active Directory, Sun ONE Directory Server, Microsoft SQL Server, and Oracle 9i. These pre configured, highly reusable templates provide administrators the ability to systematically provision applications to Windows, UNIX and Linux platforms across the data center. Application-specific probes provide detailed inventory, configuration and patch information that can be leveraged for configuration management, compliance and impact analysis.

Enhanced Server Configuration Analysis, Baselining, Tracking and Reporting – The ability to identify and analyze the impact, conflicts and dependencies related to configuration changes shortens testing and integration time and reduces the risk related to changes by identifying the affected areas. Configuration baselining and enhanced reporting provide improved visibility and tracking of server configurations Integrated Provisioning and Patching - Integrated application of patches during server provisioning ensures that servers become activated with correct patch levels based on policies. IT administrators can automatically acquire patches, conduct vulnerability assessments, deploy approved and pre-qualified patches and continuously and automatically verify that servers remain in compliance as prescribed by policy.

Extended Platform Support -- New support for native operating system installers, including HP-UX Ignite, Microsoft ADS, and Solaris Jumpstar provides policy-based control and seamless process integration of those installers with Radia inventory, application and patch management, resulting in a highly automated "top to bottom" provisioning processes. New support for Intel-based blade servers from Dell, HP, and IBM enables policy-based provisioning and configuration by rack, chassis or slot. In addition, new support for Alteon, Cisco, and F5 load balancers enhances automation and enables production-safe configuration changes.


About Novadigm:
Novadigm is a leading provider of software and content management solutions for enterprise and Internet computing environments that enable organizations to reduce software management costs, speed time-to-market, expand marketing channels and open new sources of revenue. Novadigm's suite of integrated products, based on the company's e-wrap(TM) technology, work seamlessly together as the only end-to-end solution that can efficiently, reliably and scalably deploy and manage the full range of today's software and content, personalized for a wide range of computing devices, across virtually any network.

Novadigm customers -- Global 1000 business enterprises, software vendors and service providers around the world -- report software management savings of 80 percent or more, time-to-market improvements of 70 percent or more, and reliability typically greater than 99 percent.

For more information on Novadigm, please visit www.novadigm.com