Centeris Adds Windows and Linux Experts from Microsoft and HP; Ganugapati, Carter Deepen Development Team's Windows/Linux Server Integration and Management Expertise.

BELLEVUE, Wash. -- Centeris(R) Corporation today announced the addition of Microsoft(R) Windows(R) and Linux(R) experts to its development team. The new employees bring extensive experience with Microsoft Active Directory(R) and Samba, which the company expects to further strengthen its position as a leader in the development of Windows/Linux server integration and management technology.

Krishna Ganugapati, a former Microsoft Windows architect and industry-recognized Active Directory expert who worked for more than a decade at Microsoft, joins as director of development. Gerald Carter, formerly a Samba/open source developer at HP who is also widely known in the open source community for his work as contributor and release manager for the Samba Team and published author of numerous technical books on open source technologies, joins as software design engineer.

"The strength of our mixed network management solution, Centeris Likewise(TM), is the result of our development team's deep expertise in the Windows and Linux server platforms," said Manny Vellon, vice president of product development for Centeris. "Krishna's Active Directory expertise and Gerald's background in Samba will provide critical support to our mission of delivering seamless management of Linux servers in Windows networks."

Configuration of Linux servers to work well with Active Directory is a key feature of Centeris Likewise Management Suite, the company's flagship product. Centeris Likewise also works with Samba, an open source file sharing protocol, to help Windows administrators more easily configure file and print server roles on Linux servers. Likewise, currently in beta release, is scheduled for launch in January.

Ganugapati spent most of the last 15 years working for Microsoft. He led several development teams that were responsible for a host of networking and distributed systems technologies in the Windows operating system family, including the Active Directory client infrastructure, wireless and network security infrastructure. From 1995 to 1998, Ganugapati was the inventor and principal architect of the Active Directory Services Interfaces, which remain the preferred method of accessing Active Directory.

"The majority of enterprise companies are already running both Windows and Linux," said Ganugapati. "The key to running a mixed environment is to effectively integrate key components, including Samba and Active Directory, and to provide a seamless management experience across both platforms. That's a huge challenge for most companies. Centeris is the first company to build a comprehensive solution to address this problem, and I'm thrilled to have the opportunity to participate in the development of such industry leading technology."

Before his four years at HP, Carter worked as an independent tutorial instructor, participating in numerous conferences worldwide, including Usenix, IDG Linuxworld, SANE, NordU and SambaXP. Before that he worked at VA Linux systems, where his duties included Samba software development, file/print server deployments, directory services and Linux/Samba instructional training courses. Carter has been an active member of the Samba Team since 1998, and he is currently serving as production release manager for Samba 3.0.

"With Samba, the focus has been on features and network protocols, while the polishing work -- like providing the ability to manage those features in a way that's familiar to Windows administrators -- has been necessarily postponed," said Carter. "Until Centeris Likewise, companies who chose open source had to undertake this polishing work themselves. The appeal of Centeris is their technology paves the way for wider deployment of Samba and Linux than previously has been possible for many organizations."

About Centeris

Centeris solutions give customers the freedom to choose the server platform best suited to their business needs. Our flagship product, Centeris Likewise, makes it easy for midsized and enterprise companies running Microsoft Windows networks to configure and manage Linux(R) servers. Likewise provides familiar Windows-based management tools and improved integration of Windows and Linux servers, helping companies achieve the full benefits of running mixed networks. Centeris Corporation is a Bellevue, WA-based software company funded by leading venture capital firm Ignition Partners. Centeris has experienced management and engineering teams in place and is led by senior executives from leading technology companies such as Microsoft, F5 Networks, EMC and Mercury.