Fresenius Medical Care Selects Altiris to Help Secure and Manage Thousands of IT Assets; Altiris(R) Client Management Suite(TM) Helps Stop Virus and Worm Attacks.

SALT LAKE CITY -- Altiris Inc. (Nasdaq: ATRS), a pioneer of service-oriented management solutions, today announced that Fresenius Medical Care North America (FMCNA), the leading provider of dialysis services with more than 1,500 clinics across North America, has selected Altiris(R) Client Management Suite(TM) to optimize existing efforts in PC management and to reduce IT management costs. Using Altiris' natively integrated solutions, Fresenius Medical Care has automated critical IT functions to ensure business continuity in its facilities providing life-sustaining dialysis care.

With an eye to always optimize expensive resources for PC support, Tony Carrillo, Fresenius sr. manager, Desktop Support and Engineering, required an IT management solution. "Managing more than 10,000 desktops efficiently has its inherent challenges," Carrillo said.

Fresenius looked to Altiris for management capabilities that included bandwidth throttling, natively integrated solutions and scalability. Additionally, Carrillo and his staff sought to reduce patch and virus vulnerabilities inherent to large, remote environments.

Security Management and Business Continuity

Before implementing Altiris, Fresenius did not automate patch management. "With Altiris(R) Patch Management Solution(TM) in place we can patch 90 percent of our machines within hours of the patches being made available to us," Carrillo reported. To date, Carrillo's team has knowingly prevented several virus and worm attacks through automated patch distribution to keep the company's valuable computing assets stable and secure.

In addition to proactively managing patches, Carrillo's team has leveraged Altiris(R) Deployment Solution(TM) to standardize security at the OS level by eliminating image inconsistencies and deployment errors. "With more than 10,000 PCs to manage, we had a large number of images to track," Carrillo said. Deployment Solution provides hardware-independent imaging features to help Carrillo's team deploy a standardized and secure image built to the unique specifications of Fresenius' hardware platforms.

Carrillo's team also tests for potential software conflicts prior to deployment and installation using Wise Package Studio(R). "This capability saves us time and effort by avoiding the expected help desk calls after a migration or software deployment," Carrillo said.

Due to Fresenius' large, remotely managed environment, it was an ideal candidate to validate Altiris package server scalability. "The initial install of Deployment Solution to a select group of pilot sites went so well we decided to push the limits to test the resiliency of the product," Carrillo recounted.

Working closely with Altiris developers and consultants, Carrillo's staff piloted a test to manage more than 900 package servers from a single Notification Server, though the previously recommended threshold was lower. Fresenius' package server testing was instrumental in verifying Altiris' scalability in zero-touch deployment. "This remote deployment success validated our purchase of Altiris and built confidence in the relationship between Altiris and Fresenius," Carrillo said.

IT Asset Management

Without an automated tool to assess hardware and software inventory, Carrillo's team relied on traditional tools such as spreadsheets with vendor-supplied data to track asset inventory. "Altiris allowed us to true up our records and gave us near real-time reports on inventory status," Carrillo said. "Knowing system specs and software inventory on any given machine greatly reduces troubleshooting time and costs."

But to Carrillo's team Altiris provides more than just cutting-edge software. "Everyone at Altiris is concerned with our issues and they make a concerted effort to resolve them," Carrillo said. "I haven't seen that kind of service provided by any hardware or software vendor that we have ever dealt with."

About Fresenius Medical Care

Fresenius Medical Care North America (FMCNA) is the nation's leading integrated provider of products and services for individuals with chronic kidney failure, a condition that affects nearly 400,000 Americans, and more than 1,400,000 individuals worldwide. With more than 35,000 employees, FMCNA operates a nationwide network of clinics that provide dialysis treatment. The company also manufactures and distributes dialysis products, performs specialized diagnostic and laboratory testing for renal patients and provides comprehensive renal disease management services. www.ultracare-dialysis.com

About Altiris

Altiris Inc. is a leading provider of service-oriented management software that enables IT organizations to easily manage, secure and service heterogeneous IT assets. Flexible solutions from Altiris help IT align services to drive business objectives, deliver audit-ready security, automate tasks, and reduce the cost and complexity of management. For more information, visit www.altiris.com.

Altiris is a registered trademark of Altiris Inc. in the United States and in other countries. Client Management Suite, Patch Management Solution and Deployment Solution are trademarks of Altiris Inc. Wise Package Studio is a registered trademark of Wise Solutions Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Altiris Inc. The other company names or products mentioned are or may be trademarks of their respective owners.