Opsware (NASDAQ:OPSW)
Historical Stock Chart
From Oct 2019 to Oct 2024
At its annual Analyst Day event today in New York City, Opsware Inc.
(NASDAQ:OPSW), the leading provider of Data Center Automation software,
announced a new version of its software suite designed to deliver the
Zero Latency Data Center, Opsware’s vision for
nimble enterprise IT operations accelerated to help businesses achieve
their technology-powered objectives without delay.
Latency is the gap in time between a task’s
initiation and its completion. In IT, latency stems from a combination
of the siloed management of different IT infrastructure elements
(servers, networks, storage, processes); the extensive reliance on
manual “hand-offs”
between disparate IT groups; and the independent and loosely coordinated
management of different geographies within a global IT organization.
Until now, IT management tools, which should help get rid of latency,
have themselves been just as disparate, unintegrated and incompatible as
the hundreds, often thousands of different applications running in data
centers that these tools are called upon to manage. Thus these
management tools themselves can be significant sources of latency.
In the Zero Latency Data Center, there are no manual, error-prone
hand-offs between processes that should be integrated, no cracks between
infrastructure groups because of their use of incompatible tools, no
discrepancies in information caused by geographic distance, nor any of
the wasteful and now unnecessary causes of delays and inefficiencies
that have plagued data centers.
The Opsware Automation System eradicates latency by attacking its root
causes. It is the first unified automation suite for the whole data
center. Unlike any other automation software available today, the
Opsware suite integrates change management, compliance, and process
automation all in one, working across servers, networks and, later this
year, storage. This seamless combination will allow customers to achieve
comprehensive, end-to-end automation to a degree that has been
previously unattainable — enabling
orders-of-magnitude labor and cost savings as well as greater
predictability and accountability across IT operations. Most
importantly, the Zero Latency Data Center makes it possible for
businesses to use IT as a catalyst for achieving their most critical
objectives faster than ever before.
“The Zero Latency Data Center unlocks the
power of technology for global businesses and represents a major turning
point in enterprise IT,” said Ben Horowitz,
president and CEO of Opsware Inc. “Now IT can
assume the roles it was always meant to have: the engine of breakthrough
business accomplishment, the agent of game-changing competitive
advantage. Delays, outages and cost-overruns caused by IT latency have
for too long stifled business progress. The Opsware Automation System
makes the Zero Latency Data Center a reality. It enables frictionless IT
operations, yielding orders-of-magnitude improvements in efficiency; in
quality and consistency of service; and in compliance. Even better, it
puts within reach the highest aspirations of business powered by
technology.”
Leading Companies Quash Latency with Opsware
Opsware’s Data Center Automation software is
eradicating latency for more than 350 companies globally. Many Opsware
customers have achieved 90% or more time savings per task through
implementing the Opsware Automation System. Among some of the impressive
results:
95% Improvement in Time-to-Repair. A top 10 telecommunications
company reduced the time to provision retail wireless access spots
from 7 days to 6 hours and achieved a 95% improvement in
time-to-repair.
217% Increase in Application Updates. The world's largest
specialty retailer in its category more than tripled the number of
application updates to hundreds of locations nationwide from 1,200 to
3,800 per week.
Increased Compliance Rate from 4% to 100% for Thousands of Servers.
A top 5 software company increased the compliance rate for their
network infrastructure from 4% to 100%.
Characteristics of the Zero Latency Data Center
In order to achieve zero latency, a data center automation system must
be global, seamless, and living.
Global
It must be global and all-inclusive in scope, encompassing not only the
operations of all data center and remote locations spread around the
world, but also all aspects of the physical and virtual IT
infrastructure. This includes all silos, all vendors, all makes and
models of devices, and all software applications and configurations. For
example, it must be able to manage both physical and virtual servers
side-by-side, as the full gamut of operational issues are every bit as
relevant to virtual servers as they are to physical ones.
Seamless
A zero latency data center automation system must be seamlessly
integrated. All barriers between tasks, infrastructure, geographies,
competing best practices, and related external systems must be
eliminated. Changes in one part of the data center must immediately be
reflected everywhere. IT’s dependency on
momentary, point-to-point integrations — a
source of continual errors and significant latency —
must be replaced by a single authoritative data model that gives
everyone the same view of the entire global environment.
It is not sufficient, for example, to automate server change and
configuration unless network and storage are also taken into account.
Today’s server, network and storage
infrastructure is intricately intertwined, with the result that a change
made to one part of the infrastructure almost always necessitates tuning
and re-configuring of another part. Because today’s
point tools only manage one part of the infrastructure —
servers or networks or storage — changes are
not synchronized across the entire application environment. This
inevitably results in errors and frequent application downtime. Seamless
management across the entire data center infrastructure removes the risk
of downtime, the risk of security vulnerabilities, and the risk of
mis-configurations. The end result is the elimination of latency across
data center operations.
Living
Finally, to achieve zero latency an automation system must be living in
terms of its ability to respond immediately to the changing needs of
business. It must be continually and automatically refreshed with
compliance policies, security fixes, software patches, and other vital
software content. It must know how to respond appropriately to new
information and dynamically update all related infrastructure and
applications.
The Opsware Automation System Makes Zero Latency a Reality
The new version of the Opsware Automation System, available now, meets
all the criteria for delivering zero latency. It is the first unified
automation system designed to meet the needs of the whole data center.
Integrating change management, compliance and process automation across
all four data center elements — servers,
networks, storage and all processes — it is
the first automation system to satisfy the criteria of global, seamless
and living.
The Opsware suite is global in every sense. It scales easily to
manage data centers connected across the world running thousands of
servers. It manages both physical and virtual servers side-by-side, and
supports virtually every major server operating system, network device
and storage platform — thousands of different
technologies and configurations in all.
The Opsware Automation System is integrated seamlessly. It
automates servers, networks, processes and, later this year, storage
devices in concert with each other, eliminating the tremendous latency
inherent in not integrating these tasks. Furthermore, by automating the
data center across change management, compliance and process automation,
the system makes it possible to automate the implementation of best
practices such as the Information Technology Infrastructure Library
(ITIL) specification being adopted by major IT organizations globally.
Finally, the Opsware suite is a living system, capable of
responding to new information and taking the appropriate action with it.
The Opsware Network is the industry’s only
subscription service for automating software and content delivery to
servers and network devices. It automatically determines which security
and compliance updates are relevant to a customer’s
specific environment, and then applies those updates dynamically to the
vulnerable infrastructure. The new version of the Opsware Automation
System includes more than 2,000 additional compliance checks.
“ONE system for the whole data center equals
ZERO latency: this is the new math of information technology,”
said Tim Howes, CTO at Opsware Inc. “By
providing the industry’s only fully unified
automation suite for the whole data center, Opsware is eradicating
latency from enterprise IT. The race is on for IT organizations to
streamline their operations to deliver business results. By implementing
the Zero Latency Data Center, IT organizations can achieve unprecedented
results and help their businesses achieve lasting competitive advantage.”
About Opsware Inc. (NASDAQ:OPSW)
Opsware, the world’s leading IT automation
company, unlocks the promise of technology by accelerating IT to zero
latency. The company’s software, the Opsware
System, automates the entire data center, from provisioning to patching,
configuration to compliance and discovery to deployment, turning data
center operations into a competitive advantage for business. Opsware’s
technology is used by hundreds of companies worldwide including banks,
service providers, retailers, manufacturers and Internet companies with
IT environments ranging from hundreds to tens of thousands of servers,
network devices, storage devices and IT processes.
Opsware is a service mark and trademark of Opsware Inc. All other
product names, service marks, and trademarks mentioned herein are
trademarks of their respective owners.
This press release contains forward-looking statements regarding the
benefits and capabilities of our software products. These statements are
subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to
differ materially from these statements, including the risk that the
assumptions underlying our current business strategy may change, that
our experience operating as a software company is limited, and that the
products may not perform as described. More information about these and
other factors that could affect our business are included in our Form
10-K filed with the SEC on April 14, 2006 under the headings “Risk
Factors” and “Management’s
Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations”
and the Forms 10-Q and 8-K that we file during the fiscal year. The
determination of when the new automation capabilities described in this
release will be made generally available, if ever, remains at the sole
discretion of Opsware Inc.