Symantec Delivers New Generation of Client and Server Management

New Altiris Endpoint Management Suites extend Symantec’s leadership in IT Lifecycle Automation.

LAS VEGAS – ManageFusion .– Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced Altiris Client Management Suite 7.0 and Altiris Server Management Suite 7.0. Both suites offer better visibility into IT assets, simplified day-to-day manageability and improved end-user productivity, helping customers realize significant cost savings and value out of their existing IT investments.

By using Symantec’s integrated endpoint management solutions across a broad range of client and server systems – physical or virtual – customers can ensure that their valuable information resources are protected completely, managed easily and controlled automatically. Client Management Suite 7.0 and Server Management Suite 7.0 automate manual management tasks, ensure business productivity tools and data are functioning properly, and help ensure license compliance. Both suites are built on the Symantec Management Platform, driving best practice process automation and providing modular and extensible integration across Symantec’s product portfolio and third-party solutions.

“As the current economic slowdown has placed a greater emphasis on cost reductions, our customers are looking for better ways to cut expenses and reduce the growing complexity of managing endpoints while improving security,” said Francis deSouza, senior vice president, Enterprise Security Group, Symantec. “Client Management Suite 7.0 and Server Management Suite 7.0 provide the necessary automation and integration from a central location to help our customers reduce the time it takes to manage their assets, improve security and reduce operational costs.”

Client Management Suite 7.0

Client Management Suite 7.0 gives customers a comprehensive solution for better control of their IT environment by streamlining efforts associated with deploying, managing, securing and troubleshooting client systems. New features in Client Management Suite 7.0 include:

* Intelligent software management helps organizations tackle the complexity of managing hundreds of enterprise and home grown software packages by auditing and categorizing known applications into a software catalog, automatically distributing software with all of the required components and performing periodic enforcement checks to ensure configuration remains intact.
* Increased platform coverage enables IT client administrators to extend their PC lifecycle management control across Windows, Linux and Mac and includes a new native OS X agent with an integrated software request portal.
* Integrated power management promotes energy conservation by establishing centralized policies that control desktop and laptop power modes. Integrated support for Intel vPro technology allows administrators to power on systems just long enough for routine off-hour tasks, such as installing software updates and patches.
* Advanced systems management technologies – such as imaging, remote control, and application virtualization and packaging – leveraged from industry-leading Symantec products including Symantec Ghost, Symantec pcAnywhere, Symantec Workspace Virtualization, and Wise packaging technology help customers with increased functionality and advanced capabilities.

“Symantec’s comprehensive endpoint management solutions help us to do more with less by taking the guesswork out of managing more than 10,000 desktops and 1,000 servers,” said Dave Durkee, systems engineer, Meijer, a grocery retailer that operates 185 supercenters throughout the eastern United States. “For example, the automation capabilities of Client Management Suite and Server Management Suite have improved our patch management process, putting our endpoints at near 100 percent compliance. With Symantec’s integrated approach, we have all the tools we need from one vendor to help us keep our endpoints updated, allowing us to focus on other important IT issues.”

Server Management Suite 7.0

Server Management Suite 7.0 provides the essential capabilities to discover, provision, manage and monitor server infrastructures across a range of platforms – regardless of whether the server is physical or virtual. This allows IT administrators to increase the availability of servers and critical business systems. New features in Server Management Suite 7.0 include:

* Integrated performance monitoring allows IT administrators to quickly identify and resolve issues impacting the availability of distributed IT servers. This new feature provides an easy to use set of tools to intelligently monitor key performance attributes and rapidly diagnose issues with a historical data workbench.
* Consolidated event management enables organizations to collect, store and analyze performance and operational events as well as respond to critical issues. The event console normalizes a broad scope of event data and correlates the impact of incidents based on the criticality to business. There are dozens of remediation tasks available for immediate problem resolution.
* New scheduling and change management features help IT administrators to improve day-to-day management by giving them a view of all change activities and allowing them to easily implement maintenance windows when allowed changes can occur.

Customers can also leverage Design and Pilot Services for both suites offered through Symantec Consulting Services. These services will help to rapidly configure and deploy the Symantec Management Platform in a production environment delivering a best-in-class implementation from trained Symantec experts. Symantec’s experienced consultants will review the environment, assess applicable IT and business requirements, design and configure the solution, and pilot in production. Symantec also offers customers a full range of technical support and education offerings.

Client Management Suite 7.0 and Server Management Suite 7.0 share the Symantec Management Console allowing administrators to manage operations from a single point. Customers can take advantage of the Symantec Management Console to integrate the management of additional functions that Symantec provides, including security, data loss prevention, and backup and recovery of data and systems. In addition, both suites can be installed and configured in less time while providing better support for Windows, UNIX, VMware, Linux and Mac.

As part of its endpoint control integration strategy, Symantec has integrated the security and management of endpoints to help customers ensure that all information – in motion and at rest – is protected across endpoints, networks and on storage devices. To deliver on this vision, Symantec has already leveraged the modularity and extensibility of the platform to integrate technologies from some of its key products, including Symantec Endpoint Protection, Backup Exec, Backup Exec System Recovery and Symantec Data Loss Prevention for Endpoint. By implementing a unified solution, organizations can simplify the implementation and operations of their IT strategy while reducing costs with a single vendor.

Recently, Symantec was positioned in the Leaders quadrant in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for PC Lifecycle Configuration Management [1]. According to the report: “Positioning in the Leaders Quadrant is the result of successful completeness of vision and ability to execute.” The report also states that the vendors in the Leaders Quadrant have “unique characteristics that position them favorably for future market success.”

For inclusion in the Magic Quadrant for PC Life Cycle Configuration Management, 2008, vendor solutions were required to include the following functions in their management suites: inventory, software distribution, patch management, and OS deployment. Vendors also needed to have at least four of these capabilities in their suites: remote control, software usage monitoring, application virtualization, application streaming, security configuration management, application packaging, data and settings migration and policy management (for example, configuration control).

Licensing and Availability

Altiris Client Management Suite 7.0 and Altiris Server Management Suite 7.0 from Symantec are now available and can be purchased directly from Symantec or through Symantec’s worldwide network of value-added authorized resellers, distributors and systems integrators. For more information, please visit http://www.symantec.com/business/client-management-suite and http://www.symantec.com/business/server-management-suite.