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rPath offers management solution for Red Hat

From:  "Nicole Messier" <nmessier-AT-techmarket.com>
To:  "Jonathan Corbet" <lwn-AT-lwn.net>
Subject:  rPath Tames System Complexity; Offers Management Solution for Red Hat
Date:  Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:07:02 -0800
Message-ID:  <30576166.20091130100702@techmarket.com>



rPath Refines Release Automation Platform (http://bit.ly/5JWUIT)  
·        Enterprise-focused upgrades lay the foundation for enterprise release automation
·        User experience and management tools optimized for enterprise IT operations groups seeking
automation solutions for release management processes
·        A whitepaper describing rPath's release automation solution is available at
http://bit.ly/2wEW4N
 
RALEIGH, N.C. - November 30, 2009 - rPath, an innovator in automating application deployment and
maintenance, today announced enterprise-focused productivity and management enhancements to the
rPath release automation platform. The upgrades refine the functionality and user experience of the
industry's first fully version controlled release automation solution, meeting the needs of each
stakeholder in the enterprise release management process. These upgrades are the first product
delivery against "Project Javelin," which extends rPath's unique system version controlled
management model into the broader data center automation market.
 
In related news, rPath today announced a management solution for Red Hat Enterprise Linux; see
"rPath Expands Operating System Coverage with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5."
 
"For enterprise IT, system complexity is emerging as the greatest threat to cost, compliance and
service level agreements," said Jake Sorofman, vice president of marketing for rPath. "At the
center of the complexity challenge is the release management process-the tasks associated with
creating, provisioning and maintaining software systems. With this latest rPath version, we're
arming IT organizations with the tools to easily standardize, automate, control and audit their
release management processes, reducing delay, operating expenses and compliance risks."
 
Release Automation Addresses System Complexity Crisis
 
System complexity is accelerating in the enterprise, driven by a number of key forces. First, the
use of open source, dynamic programming languages and application frameworks means that software is
more diverse than ever before. At the same time, the popularity of Agile and other iterative
development techniques has dramatically increased the pace of change. Both of these trends place
pressure on the IT operations groups responsible for provisioning and maintaining software systems.
Making matters worse, virtualization has multiplied the volume of system instances that require
management-and cloud computing promises to compound the problem.
 
In response to the system complexity crisis, rPath has enhanced its release automation platform
with richer capabilities for enterprise IT groups. These enhancements include:
 
·     Dashboard reporting - Visualizes the release and system environment, allowing users to
understand system compliance, measure software distribution rates and patterns, and take action on
release processes and system updates.
·     Workflow integration and role-based support - Provides built-in dialogs and workflow
supporting key tasks for release engineers, managers and system administrators. In addition, rPath
provides seamless API integration with existing workflow, business process management, and service
desk tools.
·     Release catalog and promotion UI - Provides an easy-to-use, accurate list of approved,
deployable software for IT operations.  rPath's UI for release promotion makes it easy to
promote/demote system versions between development, testing and production.
·     Centralized system inventory - Provides an up-to-date, easy-to-query list of all systems-
physical-, virtual-, or cloud-resident-under rPath management, complete with key discovered
attributes and required software versions.
·     Central control for provisioning and pushing updates - Allows administrators to easily
provision systems and updates across single systems or entire data centers, with complete control
over maintenance timing and rollback.
 
According to an October 2009 report titled "The Shifting Sands of IT Compel A New Landscape for IT
Automation Tools" by Glenn O'Donnell, senior analyst with Forrester Research, "A combination of
forces, including skyrocketing complexity and severe economic pressure, are radically and
irreversibly altering the IT landscape. New methods, new functional sourcing, and new
organizational structures are needed to address this onslaught, but one theme is obvious throughout
all of these approaches-a need to automate more of what you do in IT. The typical IT organization
wastes a significant portion of its budget on inefficiencies that only get worse as complexity
grows. Automate many of these tasks and you become leaner and more responsive to business
changes."[1]
 
The enhanced rPath release automation platform will help to reduce the time, cost and risk of
system creation, provisioning and maintenance, enabling IT operations groups to deliver solutions
for some of the most pressing challenges in IT today, including:
 
Release Management - taking time, cost and risk out of deployment and maintenance 
Compliance - meeting regulatory demands of PCI, HIPAA, SOX, etc. 
Self-service IT - policy-based automation for speed and control 
Virtualization - managing VM sprawl and optimizing server density 
Cloud Computing - packaging applications as cloud-ready systems 
OS/Platform Management - flexibly creating and maintaining customized platforms with certified,
industry-standard components 
A whitepaper describing rPath's release automation solution is available at http://bit.ly/2wEW4N.
 
For more information on rPath, please visit http://www.rpath.com. For additional perspectives,
please visit and subscribe to rPath RSS blog feeds at http://blogs.rpath.com/wpmu/. Follow rPath on
Twitter at @rpath.
 
Additional Resources
 
rPath website: http://www.rpath.com
 
rPath blog: http://blogs.rpath.com/wpmu/
 
rPath on Twitter: @rPath
 
rPath press releases and commentaries: http://www.rpath.com/corp/news-and-events
 
rPath videos and podcasts: http://www.rpath.com/corp/audio-and-video
 
rPath Cloud Computing Adoption Model: http://www.rpath.com/corp/cloud-adoption-model
 
rPath Knowledge Center: http://www.rpath.com/corp/browse-resources
 
rPath webinars: http://www.rpath.com/corp/webinar
 
About rPath
 
rPath automates application deployment and maintenance across physical, virtual and cloud
environments. rPath's innovative release automation platform is based on the industry's only
commercial version control repository for managing deployed software systems. The result is an
easy-to-deploy and cost-effective automation solution for rapid, low-risk and low-overhead
deployment and maintenance of complex applications. rPath dramatically improves responsiveness to
business lines, reduces compliance risks, and allows resource-constrained IT organizations to
significantly reduce operating costs and "do more with less." Headquartered in Raleigh, NC, rPath
has 70+ customers including some of the world's largest enterprises and ISVs. Visit www.rpath.com.
 
###
 
rPath is a registered trademark of rPath. All other brand names and product names are trademarks or
registered trademarks of their respective companies.
 
Tags: rPath, release automation, release automation platform, data center automation, application
deployment, unified automation and control, version control repository
 


rPath Expands Operating System Coverage with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5
(http://bit.ly/69t2ES)  
·        rPath release automation platform helps Red Hat Enterprise Linux customers reduce the
time, cost and risk of system creation, provisioning and maintenance
·        A white paper describing rPath's approach to managing Red Hat systems is available at
http://bit.ly/7sYbAV
·        rPath to host webinar for Red Hat customers on December 10: http://bit.ly/5w8Bex
 
RALEIGH, N.C. - November 30, 2009 - rPath, an innovator in automating application deployment and
maintenance, today announced a management solution for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux® operating
system. The move expands the rPath release automation platform beyond operating systems such as
Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise and Ubuntu to include Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5. This provides
Red Hat customers a solution for low-overhead, compliant system provisioning and maintenance across
physical, virtual and cloud environments.
 
In related news, rPath today announced functional and user experience enhancements to the rPath
release automation platform; see "rPath Refines Release Automation Platform."
 
"Enterprise IT operations have diverse operating system environments, which provides flexibility
but comes at a high cost: Escalating management burdens and compliance risks due to loss of system
transparency and control," said Erik Troan, founder and CTO of rPath and the first engineer for Red
Hat. "rPath was designed to address this problem, combining flexibility and control with a solution
for deep system transparency and strong versioning. The result is a release automation solution
that takes time, cost and risk out of managing Linux stacks."
 
Red Hat Meets rPath for OS and Release Management
 
The rPath release automation platform automates the creation, provisioning and maintenance of
complex software systems. Based on the industry's only system version control repository, rPath
manages the entire system-together with all of its components and dependencies-to provide deep
transparency and control across the lifecycle of the deployed system.
 
With this announcement, Red Hat customers can now use the rPath release automation platform to
manage their systems running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 and 5.
 
Red Hat customers can use rPath in one of two ways:
 
1.      Managing OS platforms - rPath enables OS and platform groups to easily pick and choose from
certified Red Hat Enterprise Linux packages and errata to provision and cost-effectively maintain
diverse computing environments. This provides the flexibility of diverse platforms with the
scalable management of a standardized platform.
 
2.      Managing the entire software stack - rPath enables release engineers to automatically
package, provision and maintain self-contained software systems that include all of their required
components-from the application through Red Hat Enterprise Linux. These ready-to-deploy systems are
optionally constructed with policies that optimize footprint size, enforce compliance standards,
and harden for maximum security.
 
For both release managers and operating system engineers, rPath provides:
 
·        Automated dependency discovery and resolution
·        Hierarchical system definition for platform reuse
·        Strong version control of deployed systems
·        Automated and incremental update of running systems
·        System rollback and reproduction for troubleshooting or compliance
·        On-demand provisioning of output formats for any physical, virtual or cloud target
 
Combining Flexibility with Control
 
Many IT groups have found that a one-size-fits-all approach to OS and platform management no longer
meets their needs. Applications have become increasingly diverse-with unique dependencies-and
provisioning the same platform each and every time no longer makes sense.
 
For release managers and OS engineers, the rPath release automation platform now offers a way to
provision and maintain diverse software systems in a way that is highly scalable and cost
effective. For Red Hat customers, rPath imports complete RPM packages into its repository, ensuring
uninterrupted supportability and allowing IT organizations to continue using the RPM format and
other related tools. rPath also integrates with Red Hat Network (RHN) as an update channel. This
enables users to select specific errata and incrementally update deployed systems.
 
In this manner, rPath offers the scalable management of a single off-the-shelf platform with the
flexibility to provision many platform versions and tailored variants. This allows IT groups to
extend existing OS investments with more flexibility, automation and control in how the software is
deployed and maintained.
 
Download a white paper describing rPath's approach to managing Red Hat systems:
http://bit.ly/7sYbAV.
 
Register for a webinar "Combining Flexibility and Control: Managing the ?Complexity Hell' of
Customized Linux Platforms," Thursday, December 10, 2009 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern time:
http://bit.ly/5w8Bex.
 
For more information on rPath, please visit http://www.rpath.com. For additional perspectives,
visit and subscribe to rPath RSS blog feeds at http://blogs.rpath.com/wpmu/, and follow rPath on
Twitter at @rpath.
 
Additional Resources
 
rPath website: http://www.rpath.com
 
rPath blog: http://blogs.rpath.com/wpmu/
 
rPath on Twitter: @rPath
 
rPath press releases and commentaries: http://www.rpath.com/corp/news-and-events
 
rPath videos and podcasts: http://www.rpath.com/corp/audio-and-video
 
rPath Cloud Computing Adoption Model: http://www.rpath.com/corp/cloud-adoption-model
 
rPath Knowledge Center: http://www.rpath.com/corp/browse-resources
 
rPath webinars: http://www.rpath.com/corp/webinar
 
About rPath
 
rPath automates application deployment and maintenance across physical, virtual and cloud
environments. rPath's innovative release automation platform is based on the industry's only
commercial version control repository for managing deployed software systems. The result is an
easy-to-deploy and cost-effective automation solution for rapid, low-risk and low-overhead
deployment and maintenance of complex applications. rPath dramatically improves responsiveness to
business lines, reduces compliance risks, and allows resource-constrained IT organizations to
significantly reduce operating costs and "do more with less." Headquartered in Raleigh, NC, rPath
has 70+ customers including some of the world's largest enterprises and ISVs. Visit www.rpath.com.
 
###
 
rPath is a registered trademark of rPath. All other brand names and product names are trademarks or
registered trademarks of their respective companies.
 
Tags: rPath, release automation, release automation platform, data center automation, application
deployment, unified automation and control, version control repository, Red Hat Enterprise Linux


[1] "The Shifting Sands Of IT Compel A New Landscape For IT Automation Tools," Forrester Research,
Inc., October 16, 2009


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