CLOUD

TORONTO, CANADA -- Platform Computing Inc., a leader in distributed computing software, has released Platform SiteAssure 2.1, a resource management solution that monitors and actively manages distributed computing resources across the enterprise. By ensuring the availability of applications and services and dynamically reconfiguring workloads, Platform SiteAssure 2.1 dramatically boosts enterprise performance and productivity, while reducing the risks often associated with deployment of a highly complex IT infrastructure. With built-in scalability for Grid computing, Platform SiteAssure 2.1 has improved flexibility, manageability and security features to help enterprises roll out clusters faster than ever before. Platform SiteAssure 2.1 boasts a 60 percent reduction in startup time for large clusters and a 400 percent increase in scalability from the previous version, announced in July 2001. "As Linux and high density servers become more prevalent, the cost and complexity of managing these resources increases dramatically. The impact of downtime and poor performance of networks, servers and applications creates a need to anticipate and solve problems before they impact service delivery," said Paul Hill, vice president, Marketing, Platform. "With Platform SiteAssure, enterprises can better optimize IT staff because it intuitively automates all major events, boosting scalability and higher performance. This optimizes existing hardware and software investments, and reduces the need for new expenditures by extending the life of existing resources." Platform SiteAssure easily integrates with Platform Load Sharing Facility (LSF) workload management software and third party system and network management tools to establish a complete distributed computing solution that minimizes unplanned, costly downtimes by identifying and automatically preventing problems that are likely to occur across the network. By ensuring availability and optimizing delivery for the entire user solution stack -- hardware, software and services -- productivity can be assured while the risks of unplanned downtime are reduced. Analysts estimate that lost productivity associated with critical server downtime can range from $35,000 for a small company to $130,000 per day. "Platform SiteAssure has increased our productivity tenfold," said Jim Jaquet, test software section supervisor, spacecraft test and operations, Space Systems/Loral. "By monitoring and troubleshooting problems with intelligent corrective actions, Platform SiteAssure not only minimizes disruptions for our primary engineering team, but also reduces recurring system administration costs." With out of the box monitoring, Platform SiteAssure monitors the various resources in an enterprise's distributed computing environment and dynamically adapts to conditions and events. Features include: rules-based management automation; comprehensive and easy to use management console; end-user Web transaction simulation; robust security model and multiple platform support. Platform SiteAssure is a policy-based event automation system that automatically ensures the availability, reliability and performance of large, complex networks of open systems -- all in an exceptionally small footprint that has a negligible impact on the systems it monitors and manages. Platform SiteAssure Version 2.1 distributed agent framework runs across multiple operating systems including AIX, HPUX, Linux, Solaris and Windows NT. For more information visit www.platform.com.