BladeLogic Introduces the Industry's First Comprehensive Data Center Integration Solution.

BladeLogic Orchestration Manager(TM) Enables "Best-of-Breed" Data Center Management Approach by Integrating Major Data Center Management Tools

ORLANDO, Fla. -- BladeLogic, Inc., the leading provider of next-generation data center automation software, today announced at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo the general availability of BladeLogic Orchestration Manager[TM], a new software product that provides run-time event, data exchange and workflow integration between BladeLogic's award-winning suite of data center automation software and other best-of-breed management software tools found in the data center.

IT organizations today have invested in many different management tools to support different management functions in such areas as problem management, incident management and change management, and more recently, configuration management and release management. However, all these systems have different interfaces and islands of data. Consequently, IT personnel have to spend an excessive amount of time moving between multiple tools in order to gather necessary information or manually duplicate data in order for them to accomplish their tasks. Furthermore, during critical service-impacting outages, correlating data across different tools in a timely manner is nearly impossible. This disjointed approach adds operational costs, increases the risk of human errors and impairs the IT organization's ability to evolve from a device management to a service management orientation to better support the business.

As organizations put more focus on automating the data center, the need to align and integrate disparate tools to match the underlying management processes becomes even more critical. BladeLogic Orchestration Manager allows for the development of workflows to address specific management processes across different functional groups in the data center. Additionally, it enables the seamless integration of BladeLogic's suite of data center automation software with other major enterprise management applications, such as service desk, event correlation, monitoring/fault management, asset management and other device-specific tools. By doing so, BladeLogic Orchestration Manager enables IT organizations to leverage the full business benefits of automation. Moreover, it allows customers to reduce the risk of being locked into a single vendor solution by seamlessly integrating best-of-breed management tools with minimal effort and at a very low cost.

BladeLogic Orchestration Manager provides out-of-the-box adapters that enable IT organizations to instantly integrate to numerous data center management systems, such as:

* Service Desk SystemsCoTo integrate processes such as incident, problem and change management

* Service Monitoring SystemsCoTo integrate problem management and change management

* Enterprise ConsolesCoTo integrate incident and change management

* Asset Management Systems/Configuration Management Databases (CMDBs)CoTo integrate best-of-breed CMDBs at an enterprise-level using a federated approach

* Network Configuration Management SystemsCoTo integrate configuration change and compliance assurance across networks, servers and applications

Included with BladeLogic Orchestration Manager is a "development kit" to extend integration to other point tools and home-grown applications by leveraging pre-built adapters based on common protocols such as IMAPv4, SQL, JMS, Telnet and SFTP.

"Today's data centers consist of many different management tools from multiple vendors performing multiple specialized tasks," said David Williams, Research Vice President, Gartner. "In order to integrate people, process and tools for data center management, many IT organizations use run books or other manual means. However, this approach is time-consuming, error-prone and often results in prolonged service outages, delays and increased operating costs. By implementing a solution which automates the integration of people, process and multi-vendor tools, IT organizations can create a unified IT environment consisting of best-of-breed applications. The end result is a much more efficient and responsive IT organization."

Using BladeLogic Orchestration Manager, IT organizations can now address true cross-functional service management initiatives related to best practices such as IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and Control Objectives for Information and Technology (COBIT), and enable the deployment and use of more complete and accurate configuration management databases (CMDBs). In addition, Orchestration Manager adapts to policies and procedures that have already been painstakingly defined and tuned by IT organizations over a long period of time, rather than forcing organizations to change policies and procedures to work around a specific product.

"By offering a flexible platform that allows IT organizations to more efficiently integrate a wide variety of management tools, BladeLogic Orchestration Manager enables these organizations to derive significantly more value from their existing investments," said Vijay Manwani, Chief Technology Officer, BladeLogic. "IT organizations can now use BladeLogic as the integration focal point for existing tools in the data center while preserving a "best-of-breed" management strategy to create a next-generation data center management environment."

To see a demonstration of Orchestration Manager, please visit BladeLogic in booth #1117 at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando, Florida, October 9-12.

About BladeLogic

BladeLogic is the leading provider of next-generation data center automation software with the largest installed base of Global 2000 and other leading customers, including such organizations as Capgemini, E*Trade, Expedia, HSBC, Lockheed Martin, priceline.com, Time Warner, VeriSign, Virgin Mobile and Walmart.com. BladeLogic's award-winning suite of enterprise-class data center automation solutions enables organizations of any size to achieve continuous configuration compliance across large-scale, distributed server and application environments, resulting in dramatically reduced data center operating costs, improved service quality, increased efficiencies, and enhanced compliance and security. BladeLogic is a privately held company headquartered in Lexington, Massachusetts, USA. For more information, please visit www.bladelogic.com.