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PALO ALTO, Calif. -- Collation, Inc., an enterprise software company pioneering configuration management and change tracking for web application environments, today released version 1.5 of its Confignia(TM) application, which includes expanded auto-discovery capabilities to capture legacy software, in-depth infrastructure environment comparisons, and enhanced data center reporting features. Collation began shipping Confignia 1.5 to enterprise customers in late August 2003. The most comprehensive cross-tier configuration management solution on the market, Confignia 1.5 automatically discovers and identifies all interdependencies across application, system, and network tiers and delivers rapid end-to-end visibility into the entire enterprise web application environment. Confignia 1.5 delivers the data center intelligence that enables enterprises to make informed decisions that reduce deployment cycles, lower operating costs, and accelerate troubleshooting to avoid or minimize service outages. The in-depth cross-tier understanding and change tracking intelligence that Confignia 1.5 provides is necessary for enterprises to embark on high impact projects, such as data center consolidation, infrastructure virtualization and utility computing. According to Mary Johnston Turner, practice director, Summit Strategies, "By adding the ability to dynamically capture legacy application cross-tier configuration data, Collation is now able to help enterprise customers take better control of the cost and performance of their infrastructure. Whether an enterprise is planning for data center consolidation or moving to dynamic utility computing architectures, accurate, timely cross-tier configuration data is critical to maintaining and improving required application performance, and to fully realizing the expected ROI." The Changing Role of IT According to Jean-Pierre Garbani of Forrester Research*, "IT is no longer an independent business. Its increased importance as a strategic enterprise business tool comes at a price: IT must deliver a constant, reliable, and cost-effective service." In order to deliver this type of service, IT operations must first have a complete and up-to-date understanding of the enterprise's entire web application infrastructure and its interdependencies. This is especially true when there is a change in the infrastructure -- such as new applications, upgraded software and servers, or an unknown event -- that has global impact and can result in hours or days of troubleshooting and costly service problems. Confignia 1.5 - Most Comprehensive Configuration Management Tool for Web Application Environments Since launching Confignia in March 2003, Collation has enhanced the product's capabilities by introducing four new key features. In addition to the product's core capabilities, including agent-free auto discovery, a cross-tier relationship directory, change tracking, and integrated reporting console, Confignia 1.5 includes the following new features: -- Expanded Auto-Discovery: Automatically discovers legacy software, custom software servers and applications in the web application infrastructure to provide a comprehensive software topology. -- New Comparison Capabilities: Allows users to run in-depth infrastructure comparisons that automatically compare staging and production environments, individual components, or groups of components to uncover configuration inconsistencies that often lead to service problems. -- Enhanced Reporting Engine: Offers an expanded data center reporting interface, including column sorting and improved layout that provides greater flexibility in viewing interdependency data. Confignia 1.5 also offers enhanced topology graphs with rich graphical representations of logical and physical components, providing more informative topologies to expedite troubleshooting. -- Advanced Security Options: Enables enterprises to deploy Confignia across firewall zones without requiring access to the firewall itself. "The impact of change in the data center can have dramatic consequences on user satisfaction and revenue. With service failures known to cost up to $10 million per minute, enterprises can't afford not to know what's in their infrastructure, all its interdependencies and its affect on end-user applications and services," said Robert Roblin, president and CEO, Collation. "Our customers are taking the right steps by putting in place fundamental configuration management technology that will mitigate these risks and prepare them for future utility computing initiatives." Pricing and Availability Confignia 1.5 is currently available directly from Collation by calling 650-475-0900 or emailing sales@collation.com. Pricing is based on the size of the infrastructure under management.