Opsware Advances Network Management With State-of-the-Art Automation and Introduces a New Automated Security Service

Business Wire, May 1, 2006

LAS VEGAS -- New Network Automation System 6.0 & The Opsware Network Service Provide Breakthroughs in Automating Network Compliance and Security for Large, Distributed IT Environments

Opsware Inc. (NASDAQ:OPSW), the leading provider of IT Automation software, today introduced at Interop Las Vegas 2006, Opsware Network Automation System (NAS) 6.0, which provides state-of-the-art network management and compliance enforcement for large global networks and complex VoIP, wireless and Virtual Private Network (VPN) environments. Already ranked by independent testers as the #1 network automation solution for three years in a row, Opsware NAS 6.0 once again raises the bar in network compliance and configuration management by providing new cutting-edge capabilities in the areas of compliance enforcement, network security management, disaster recovery and troubleshooting.

With the massive explosion of network devices, today's IT environments are drastically different than just a few years ago. IT organizations are under major pressure to ensure that network infrastructure is in compliance with regulatory and internal policies and highly secure across distributed, global network environments. In addition, the scale, multi-vendor nature and increasing heterogeneity brought about by next-generation infrastructures make today's IT environments highly complex, vulnerable to security attacks and costly to manage.

Opsware NAS 6.0 builds upon its enterprise class, award-winning capabilities to provide powerful state-of-the-art network compliance and change management. The new product introduces four major breakthroughs in network automation: (1) a new model for preventing unauthorized changes from being propagated into the IT environment; (2) a visual view of the network environment to ease troubleshooting and change management; (3) new technology for global policy enforcement and disaster recovery; and (4) a new security service that automates the process of identifying network vulnerabilities and closing security loopholes across the network environment.

"With NAS 6.0, Opsware continues to set the pace in network automation with a robust set of functionality that can help customers achieve increased efficiencies and higher quality IT operations by simplifying the management of device types and applications across highly distributed IT systems," said Elisabeth Rainge, program director for Next-Gen OSS, Billing and Network Management at IDC. "NAS 6.0 can provide customers with more control over compliance enforcement and offers a valuable service to automate management of network infrastructure security through automated identification of network vulnerabilities."

Highlights of the Opsware Network Automation System 6.0

New Network Compliance Model

Organizations need to track network compliance and security levels to ensure that the network meets regulatory and internal policies. However, identifying the problem after it has been deployed to the network and responding with patches and/or configuration fixes is not an effective solution. Opsware's new Network Compliance Model maintains a model of each device's policies and configurations, device interdependencies and user roles, and prevents administrators from making changes that deviate from policy.

New Security Service -- The Opsware Network

With NAS 6.0, Opsware introduces a new security service, The Opsware Network, which automates the identification of security vulnerabilities across the network environment. The Opsware Network provides an ongoing stream of vulnerability alerts and remediation in the form of actionable policies so IT organizations are proactively informed on where security exposures exist and can immediately act on fixing the issue through automated remediation capabilities provided in Opsware NAS. The Opsware Network service is provided in conjunction with the Opsware Network Automation System.

Visual Analysis of the Global Network Environment

Today's network engineers are limited to managing the network at the element level, with little understanding of how the devices interrelate or depend on each other. For example, a user pushes changes to each device individually with little visibility into what the downstream effects might be.

Opsware NAS 6.0 introduces unique network visualization technology which maps the Layer 2 and Layer 3 network to enable deeper understanding of the network and swifter, more accurate troubleshooting.

Global Policy Enforcement and Disaster Recovery

Opsware's cutting-edge Multimaster and Satellite technologies, which have been key to the appeal and rapid adoption of Opsware's Server Automation System, are now offered in Opsware NAS 6.0. Opsware's Multimaster and Satellite technologies enable the management of geographically distributed devices from a centralized location, allowing global policy enforcement and ensuring operations consistency across the entire environment. Additionally, Multimaster dramatically speeds the recovery of a data center environment in the event of a failure or disaster by enabling the immediate re-creation of device configurations and firmware levels. Opsware Satellite provides central management of network devices in complex environments, such as networks that rely on network address translation (NAT) or networks with duplicate IP addresses.