Winternals Debuts Recovery Manager 2.0 at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo; Unique Approach to Windows Recovery Unmatched in the Industry.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Winternals, a leading provider of Microsoft systems availability and performance solutions, today announced the debut of Recovery Manager 2.0 at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando, FL. This enterprise recovery solution reduces system recovery time to minutes, while preventing data loss for Windows servers, workstations, and mobile systems brought down by faulty patches, software corruption, user error, power disruptions, and malware attacks. Version 2.0 facilitates customized recovery protection for systems throughout an organization at the operating system, application, and user data level.

Recovery Manager can be especially useful when deploying Windows security patches and updates. Its unlimited roll-forward and rollback capabilities provide flexible options to return systems to a known good state if a patch causes system malfunctions. This provides a reliable fallback for IT administrators who need to quickly roll out security patches to minimize security threats.

"As rapid installation of critical security updates has become an increasingly high risk activity for the enterprise, the ability to roll back quickly has become a necessity," said Edwin Brasch, President and CEO of Winternals Software. "Recovery Manager is the first automated, remote recovery solution capable of restoring any number of damaged Windows systems to a previously functioning state. Our enterprise customers experience average recovery times of less than 15 minutes."

"Recovery Manager provides us with another line of defense against server failure, especially in regard to the frequent Microsoft patches that we have to keep deploying quickly," said Don Sutton, Senior Network Analyst at Enbridge Energy. "We have been amazed by Recovery Manager's ability to quickly restore an unbootable server."

Recovery Manager operates with minimal impact on an organization's existing IT infrastructure, and is typically deployed without the need for additional investments in storage, network, or computer hardware. Recovery Manager uses an intelligent, lightweight agent to automatically deploy network-wide from one system, and centrally stores only single instances of system files and configuration settings from all machines in the enterprise. This advanced, file-based technology consumes minimal network bandwidth and storage resources -- as opposed to storage-intensive sector-based recovery methods, which can require dedicated servers and large investments in new storage media.

When faulty patches, user errors, environmentally-induced software corruption, or other events render computers unbootable, unstable, or locked out, Recovery Manager's emergency boot environment provides unmatched speed-to-recovery. Rapidly restoring individual machines or large groups of computers in parallel, it works remotely without requiring help desk personnel to visit each machine.

Rollbacks can be accomplished at a surgical, file system level that targets any combination of operating system files and settings, applications, user data, or configuration settings selected by the administrator. By rolling back the operating system to a previous calendar setting, data integrity is maintained and up-to-the-minute user data and system settings are preserved. Recovery Manager also provides the ability to view changes to protected systems over time, so that administrators can selectively undo harmful changes. Reporting capabilities let administrators determine and document the root causes of undesired behavior to prevent similar incidents from occurring in the future.

According to research conducted by Gartner, recovery will be the focus for data protection activities, with traditional, tape backup being only one approach to providing recovery within a specified time commitment.(a) From 2003 to 2006, traditional backup products will evolve to manage data that is based on recovery time objectives.(b)

New features in Recovery Manager 2.0 include:

--Expanded Recovery Capabilities - In addition to operating system files, recovery capabilities now include program files, user registry settings, and user data, configurable by administrators according to their organization's needs.

--Improved Efficiency - Only changed portions of large files are transmitted and stored in Recovery Points. The result is improved speed and a further 25% reduction of network and storage overhead.

--Mobile PC Protection - Mobile systems can locally generate and store Recovery Points, and then transmit data to the central console whenever the system is connected to the network. This ensures full coverage for all systems in an organization's enterprise, even when disconnected from the network.

--Network Flexibility - Any system accessible via TCP/IP can be protected; Recovery Manager works on LANs, WANs, via the Internet, and on networks where File and Printer Sharing is disabled.

--Protection for Remote Systems - Recovery Points can be stored locally on remote systems for improved speed and reliability over slow and intermittent network connections.

--Enhanced Manageability - Proprietary SmartBind(TM) technology binds an Active Directory organizational unit to a recovery schedule. Any computers that are subsequently added are automatically protected, without administrator interaction.

--More Security - Recovery Point data is encrypted when transmitted across the network.

About Winternals

Founded in 1996, Winternals is a leading provider of systems availability and performance solutions for Microsoft-based enterprises worldwide. Winternals solutions empower IT professionals to rapidly resolve the daily emergencies that arise when administering Windows systems and maintain high availability of mission critical systems. By accelerating recovery, improving data integrity, increasing productivity, and optimizing performance, Winternals reduces the total cost of ownership for the Microsoft-based enterprise. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Winternals is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner that counts among its customers 48 of the Fortune 50 and 95 of the Fortune 100. For more information about Winternals visit www.winternals.com.

(a) "Predicts 2004: Recovery Replaces Backup and Replication," R. Paquet, C. DiCenzo, November 2003

(b) "Enterprise Management Technologies Will Mature in 2003," C. Haight, R. Colville, D. Curtis, R. Paquet, November 2002