Consera Software Introduces Consera AgileOne; Innovative File Server Lifecycle Management Solution Delivers Solid Business Advantage.

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

BELLEVUE, Wash.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 30, 2003

Consera Software today announced the first member of its new product family, Consera AgileOne(TM), delivering a robust environment that allows organizations to optimize their server resources while enabling change and flexibility in file server lifecycle management.

The new product utilizes an Intelligent Automation System, a powerful underlying system that provides a new level of capabilities and capacities to IT staff when working with their computing infrastructure, including automating workflows, incorporating best practices and adapting infrastructure management operations to a specific environment. Consera was founded by Microsoft veteran Frank Artale and received Series A venture funding from Ignition Partners, Intel Capital and Matrix Partners, totaling $8.5 million.

"The process of deploying, migrating or consolidating servers is a time-consuming and frustrating task, with a success rate of less than 30 percent," said Ken Winell, president and CEO of Econium LLC. "Following pages and pages of handwritten instructions is tedious and inaccurate, and until now, the only way to effectively manage the process. Consera AgileOne automates the process and does it quickly and accurately, enabling our IT department to improve the overall quality of our infrastructure, while at the same time streamlining the management of our clients' operations."

Consera AgileOne

Consera AgileOne dramatically increases flexibility in managing servers, activating the corporate IT organization and allowing it to better meet the business needs of the organization. By giving IT the visibility and adaptability they need to control their complex server environments, IT professionals can freely manage, take action and deliver improved performance on a daily basis. The product leverages Consera's powerful underlying Intelligent Automation System to effectively abstract services from the physical and operating system infrastructure, delivering complete control in the management of those services. This proprietary technology allows Consera AgileOne to encapsulate lifecycle operations and configuration information related to a computing service, codify workflows while incorporating best practices, and combine them through an Intelligent Automation Engine that discovers, maps, schedules and executes the service management tasks appropriately.

Consera AgileOne is built on a scalable agentless architecture, delivering powerful file server lifecycle management capabilities, automating the process of deploying, migrating, consolidating and redeploying servers throughout an organization. Focusing on effective server lifecycle management, file sharing service management and comprehensive administrative capabilities; Consera AgileOne integrates into the existing environment and is easily managed through either a Web Console or a command line interface. The product supports the newest technology, including Microsoft's Automated Deployment Services (ADS). The key features of Consera AgileOne include:

-- Server Lifecycle Management -- Supports discovery, deployment,

migration, consolidation and redeployment of file servers.

This includes determining file servers of interest on the

network, exposing the properties and establishing a simple

view of the server infrastructure without any manual

exploration. Consera AgileOne enables IT to add and configure

a new file sharing service with custom configuration and

provisioning bare metal servers. File servers can be migrated

with all of the data and relevant configuration, such as

permissions and security, removing the burden from these human

intensive tasks. Multiple servers can be consolidated to a

single destination or redeployed efficiently, based on

changing business needs.

-- File Sharing Service Management -- Allows users to move file

shares with configuration information related to them such as

permissions and security from source to destination. Consera

AgileOne also enables users to add and configure a file

sharing service on an existing server, using standard or

customized configuration templates.

-- Administrative Capabilities -- Consera AgileOne allows for

share and directory conflict management to occur automatically

with operator-assisted resolution for all operations. Easy

access to operations and control settings is available through

a Web Console or command line interface. The product provides

flexible access to its capabilities by the various classes of

users it supports while also producing comprehensive logs for

job analysis and reporting and providing automatic roll back

when unanticipated errors occur. Consera AgileOne incorporates

a scalable, agentless architecture, allowing customization of

operations and scheduled or immediate operations. The product

is built on the Microsoft(R) .NET framework and integrates

seamlessly with Microsoft's ADS.

"IT organizations are faced with many challenges, from reduced staffing to shrinking budgets, yet is still expected to deliver results in a timely and accurate way," said Pamela Roussos, vice president of marketing for Consera Software. "Consera AgileOne gives IT Professionals a solid and reliable method of strategically managing their server environments, creating a flexible structure allowing them to quickly react to changing needs and deliver significant business value."

Consera's Intelligent Automation System

Through the company's innovative and proprietary Intelligent Automation System, Consera AgileOne can separate software services and related configuration information from the hardware dependencies, so rote and repetitive IT tasks are automated. This powerful underlying system eliminates human error and provides a safe, systematic path for adjusting the environment to meet changing business needs. The Intelligent Automation System encapsulates a service and the configuration information relating to the service, including the type of object to be managed as well as the specific configuration information, such as security and permissions for file sharing services. This system is extensible and designed to work for a variety of services such as file sharing services, IIS (Internet Information Services) and SQL.

The Intelligent Automation System then codifies the workflows for IT tasks related to the service, such as the deployment, migration or consolidation of servers. As part of this codification, the system incorporates best practices, delivering quality and consistency to the service management activity.

The Intelligent Automation engine combines the workflows and then discovers and maps servers and services in the installed environment, even scheduling and performing the workflows for that specific environment.

Consera AgileOne System Requirements and Availability

Consera AgileOne will be available during Q3 2003 and can be purchased directly from Consera Software. In the United States Consera AgileOne is $659 per managed server this includes a year of maintenance and support.

The product requires a dedicated Windows Server 2003 compatible system, with 1 gigahertz (GHz) or higher Pentium IV (or compatible) processor, 100 gigabytes (GB) disk space and 512 megabytes (MB) of memory, network connectivity, Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and Windows Server 2003 or later operating system (U.S. editions only).

About Consera Software

Consera Software, headquartered in Bellevue, Washington, delivers the powerful server resource management solutions organizations need to reduce cost of change, extend the lifecycle of the physical and software infrastructure, and ultimately improve the contribution of IT. For the modern, agile data center, Consera's solutions improve the quality of server operations while driving down the overall cost of IT operations. The company was founded in 2002, and is led by a strong management team with extensive experience at leading technology firms, including Microsoft, Rational and IBM. The company received funding from three leading venture firms, Ignition Partners, Intel Capital and Matrix Partners. Visit the company's website at www.consera.com.