Open Country Wins Linux Journal Product Excellence Award; OCM 3.1 Systems Management Suite voted best in Systems Management Tools category

Business Wire, August 17, 2006

BELMONT, Calif. -- Open Country, a next-generation systems management software company, has been awarded the prestigious Linux Journal Product Excellence Award at the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo(R) in San Francisco, California.

OCM(TM) 3.1, the newest version of the OCM systems management suite that encourages the use of repeatable best practices in managing Linux systems, was voted best by the judges of Linux Journal.

"We're very honored that Linux Journal has recognized Open Country's OCM for this award," said Michael Grove, CEO of Open Country.

OCM is Open Country's flagship product with capabilities that provide organizations with a simple, affordable solution, enabling administrators to effectively provision, manage, monitor, and maintain Linux-based servers, desktops, blades and appliances.

OCM manages large numbers of systems by allowing administrators to group similar systems into functional or geographic units to make managing them easier. A single operation, such as installing a software package, can be applied to the entire group with one command.

Added Grove, "OCM has unique features such as automatic package deployment. For example, when a new engineer joins a group, a systems administrator will typically add a new machine to the group. OCM will automatically deploy a set of pre-defined packages. In this case an IDE, an office suite, and a bug-tracking tool will be deployed to the new machine to match the group's configuration."

Increasingly, organizations are also concerned with compliance. OCM tracks each operation with its extensive logging capability so system administrators can know by whom, what, and when a system was modified. OCM keeps hardware and software assets tracked and accounted for with its centralized database. OCM has an extensive reporting capability, with several standard report templates that can be customized to meet compliance requirements (SOX and others) and deliver information on corporate hardware and software assets.

The languages OCM 3.1 supports are English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese and Spanish. Additional features include an advanced search capability that allows for systems to be searched based on installed software and an extensive reporting capability with 12 standard report templates that can be customized to meet compliance requirements. Repetitive, time-consuming tasks, such as provisioning and deploying updates, are fully automated, and a unique web-based architecture makes OCM equally suitable for managing thousands of systems across an enterprise or managing five servers onsite.

About Open Country

Open Country helps organizations significantly simplify the management of existing enterprise Linux systems. The majority of IT costs involve repeated problem solving across the enterprise or from one enterprise to the next. Open Country enables IT managers to solve a problem once and effectively leverage the solutions across the organization. Open Country OCM(TM) Universal Systems Management Suite supports the largest number of Linux distributions in the industry. By eliminating "lock-in" to one software platform, Open Country OCM(TM) helps customers choose the best and most cost-effective options to power their enterprises. Open Country is based in Belmont, Calif. For additional information, visit www.opencountry.com.

About Linux Journal

Linux Journal is the premier Linux magazine, dedicated to serving the Linux community and promoting the use of Linux world-wide. A monthly periodical, Linux Journal is currently celebrating its twelfth year of publication. Linux Journal may be purchased at all major bookstores and newsstands and may also be ordered by calling 1 888-66-LINUX, sending e-mail to subs@ssc.com or visiting www.LinuxJournal.com.

About LinuxWorld Conference & Expo

LinuxWorld Conference & Expo is the premier event exclusively focused on Linux and open source solutions. As the world's most comprehensive marketplace for open source products and services, LinuxWorld provides business decision-makers with information and resources to implement Linux and open source solutions into business infrastructure and enterprise networks. For more information visit the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo Web site at www.linuxworldexpo.com, or call (800) 657-1474. For exhibiting opportunities, please contact Ellen Boland at (508) 988-7830 or ellen_boland@idg.com or Christian Montminy at (508) 424-4852 or christian_montminy@idg.com.