Surgient Unveils Latest Release of Industry's Leading Virtual Lab Management Applications for Software Testing, Demonstration and Training By VSM News Staff published: Friday, October 06 2006
Advanced Enterprise Capabilities Accelerate Benefits from Investments in Virtualization
AUSTIN, Texas - October 2, 2006 - Surgient, a leader in Virtual Lab Management Applications for automating software demo, test and training labs, today announced the immediate availability of version 5.0 of Surgient Virtual Lab Management Applications.
Built on the next generation Virtualization Control ServerT (VCS) platform, Surgient Virtual Lab Management solutions create, manage and deliver "virtual labs" - applications that orchestrate and optimize shared virtual infrastructure. Virtual labs enable development, QA/test, training, sales, marketing and support functions to rapidly provision and securely access complex software configurations, or sandboxed software environments, in a completely self-service manner.
Today's enterprise requires a virtual lab solution that supports critical business applications and the complex software and hardware environments required to sustain them. This latest release adds key new capabilities including support for mixed virtual infrastructure environments, image and policy-based resource management, dynamic pooling of virtual resources, scheduling and calendaring, universal remote access and customizable enterprise reporting tools. Surgient version 5.0 also adds enterprise-class scalability to deploy and manage labs consisting of thousands of virtual servers.
"The rapid adoption of virtualization in the enterprise has outpaced the planning for its use and lifecycle by IT professionals, increasing risk," said Bill Daniel, Surgient president and CEO. "Version 5.0 of Surgient Virtual Lab Management Applications eliminates this risk. Our customers are able to leverage their current investments in virtualization technologies, greatly accelerate their software delivery processes and simultaneously gain competitive advantage in the market."
Surgient Virtual Lab Management Applications leverage standard virtual infrastructure solutions from Microsoft® and VMware®. Version 5.0 enables organizations to eliminate the high costs and inflexibility of provisioning physical computing infrastructure used in key software delivery processes in both pre- and post-production environments. By enabling companies to fully optimize their software delivery lifecycle processes, Surgient v5.0 helps reduce operating costs, increase productivity and allows IT to better align with business priorities.
"IDC believes that there is a growing confluence across the virtualization and application lifecycle management (ALM) arenas," said Melinda Carol-Ballou, program director for application lifecycle management software at IDC Research. "As this happens, the process of building software and managing its development in conjunction with virtualization demands a higher level of sophistication. Technology that optimizes virtual lab deployment in both the pre- and post-production test environments simplifies the processes for testing multiple virtualization configurations and increasing test team productivity."
"Crossroads needed a powerful, yet flexible solution for testing the complete matrix of database configurations and clients against StrongBoxTM DBProtectorTM, our new database security appliance," said Judith Dietz, senior development manager at Crossroads Systems. "Surgient Virtual QA/Test Lab Management System version 5.0 offers the promise of compatibility between our appliance and customer requirements, enabling us to integrate seamlessly into their environments and move them quickly to success."
Features & Capabilities
New features in the Surgient Virtual Lab Management Applications, version 5.0, include:
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Support for heterogeneous virtual lab environments. Lab configurations often require support from multiple virtual infrastructure technologies and can include virtual machine images of different types and versions. With Surgient v5.0, the deployment requirements for each image in a lab configuration become invisible to the end user. The user simply deploys and manages the virtual lab through the Surgient self-service portal, allowing the system to orchestrate the details of capacity planning, configuration and provisioning. This assures that legacy virtual machine images can continue to be used in current test automation, demo or training processes.
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Advanced management capabilities and tools. Version 5.0 of all Surgient Virtual Lab Management Applications include an entirely revamped management console with new capabilities for managing pooled servers and how those systems are dynamically allocated. The new console also provides enhanced reservation management, calendar and scheduling tools, the ability to schedule maintenance windows for servers in the pool and other improved policy management tools. In addition, a delegated authority feature enables administrators to grant different users various levels of privilege to resources and applications. These capabilities reduce or eliminate altogether the manual work associated with lab configuration, provisioning and management.
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Enhanced reporting tools and data. New reports in version 5.0 deliver information on lab usage, server usage, historical user activity, future reservations and predicted usage. Data collected is also available for export to enterprise analysis and reporting tools.
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Enterprise virtual lab scalability. Enterprise organizations can require hundreds or thousands of virtual servers to be deployed concurrently across multiple pre- and post-production functions. Version 5.0 scales to support active management of complex enterprise labs consisting of thousands of virtual machines. A self-service console provides one-click lab reservations, easy provisioning and automated configuration. With a library-based management system, scaling of the system is as simple as adding additional servers to the pool.
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SOAP XML Web services interfaces for advanced integration. Version 5.0 includes a Web services API for advanced integration of virtual lab management capabilities with enterprise test management, learning management, live virtual classroom and other systems. The XML API enables complex application lifecycle processes to be automated across multiple applications and to be executed within the virtual lab environments.
About Surgient Virtual Lab Management Applications
Surgient develops and delivers a suite of virtual lab management applications keyed to critical phases of the enterprise application delivery lifecycle. Surgient Virtual Lab Management Applications include:
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Virtual QA/Test Lab Management System (VQMS). Enterprise organizations can easily consolidate test and development infrastructure, enabling QA/test teams to rapidly provision and securely access multi-server test configurations on demand.
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Virtual Training Lab Management System (VTMS). Enables training organizations to improve productivity and reach by automating the deployment of hands-on lab environments to support classroom and online software training.
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Virtual Demo Lab Management System (VDMS). Improves the productivity of enterprise software sales organizations by centrally managing and automating the deployment of software configurations to support demonstrations, evaluations and proof-of-concepts. Enables enterprise software marketing organizations to deliver complex software evaluations on demand without costly CD kits or cumbersome downloads.
Availability and Pricing
Surgient Virtual Lab Management Applications, version 5.0, are available immediately. Workgroup pricing begins at $35,000. More information can also be found at http://www.surgient.com.
About Surgient
Surgient puts virtualization technology to work for the world's largest companies. One of the first companies to provide on-demand applications that automate the deployment, configuration and teardown of complex enterprise software environments or "virtual labs," Surgient's award-winning virtual lab management solutions enable end users to rapidly provision needed computing resources for business-critical initiatives such as software QA/test, training, sales and marketing. With over 500,000 virtual labs applications delivered to date, Surgient enables companies such as Business Objects, CA, EMC, Mercury Interactive, Microsoft, Starwood Hotels & Resorts, and Symantec to dramatically accelerate the software application delivery lifecycle, reduce operating costs, increase productivity and enable IT to better align with business priorities. Surgient partners with leading technology companies including EMC/VMware, Microsoft, Mercury Interactive, Saba/Centra, ViewCentral and WebEx Communications. Surgient is a private, venture-backed company based in Austin, Texas. For more information, visit www.surgient.com.
About Crossroads
With headquarters in Austin, Texas, Crossroads Systems is a leading provider of Business Information Assurance (BIA) solutions. Solutions from Crossroads serve the growing needs of data storage, business continuity, disaster recovery, information protection, risk management and business information assurance markets. Crossroads' offerings are designed to help companies store, manage and ensure the security, resiliency and access to their critical enterprise information. Crossroads' products are embedded in solutions from companies such as EMC, HP, Quantum and SUN. Crossroads is currently traded on the Over the Counter Bulletin Board (OTCBB) and is a member of several key industry associations such as the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA). For more information about Crossroads Systems, please visit www.crossroads.com or call 1-866-BUY-CRDS / 1-866-289-2737.
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