http://www.kace.com/

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.–December 4, 2006-KACE™, the leader in IT management solutions for mid-market organizations, today announced a number of upgrades to its KBOX™ 1000 Series Systems Management Appliances that will add more robust functionality and make it even easier to use. The KBOX 1000 Series is an easy-to-use, affordable line of turnkey IT automation appliances that provides comprehensive management of laptops, desktops, servers and other network devices, and now includes automated agent deployment, support for Solaris 9 and 10 (SPARC and x86), and new ready-to-deploy security policies.

Solaris support, Windows Vista on the horizon

KACE customers have asked for expanded support to give them a truly comprehensive way to view and manage their mixed-network environments, and the new KBOX upgrade is answering the call. KBOX 1000 Series already supports Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (Red Hat). With this latest release, its comprehensive mixed-network management capabilities, such as full software and hardware inventory, software distribution, alerts, and reporting are extended to Solaris.

With the Microsoft Vista release to enterprises this month, many companies are looking for ways to ease their planned adoption of the new operating system, while ensuring ongoing access to and continued support of their legacy platforms. KACE will be ready to smooth this transition for mid-market organizations with support for Vista through KBOX 1000 Series early first quarter.

Automated agent deployment

KACE has made the KBOX appliance-based software delivery platform even faster and easier to use through automated agent deployment. Agent-less network-scan technology allows KBOX 1000 appliances to regularly scan for new devices on the network and auto-push agents to those devices. Now, IT managers can get a more reliable view of their network and save time by automatically deploying KBOX agents to any newly discovered Windows, Mac, Linux, and Solaris systems.

New Security Policies

The KBOX 1000 Series already allows point-and-click script creation, flexible advanced scripting functionality, use of existing and 3rd party scripts, and an XML-based scripting language. Now it includes more than 20 pre-packaged scripts and policy wizards to make it even easier to provide comprehensive security and configuration policy enforcement, and to mitigate security vulnerabilities. New pre-packaged security policies include disabling or restricting USB drives and enforcing Microsoft Outlook security settings, as well as many others.

“With this update, KACE continues to make enterprise-class IT lifecycle management accessible to organizations of all sizes,” said Andi Mann, senior analyst at EMA. “The appliance-based architecture, automated agent deployment, and built-in policies make it simple to deploy. It has a comprehensive feature set and broad platform support, yet is still easy to use. And it is priced very competitively.”

“Our customers will really benefit from all of the new functionality in our KBOX 1000 Series appliances,” said Marty Kacin, president and CTO of KACE. “The upgrade is a positive response to our user community, who have been clamoring for more options to expand their IT automation strategy. The new KBOX 1000 Series appliances will be faster to deploy, will provide enhanced security policy management and will offer better, more affordable tools to manage mixed networks in the mid-market.”

The KBOX™ 1000 Series is a secure, robust line of appliances that provides affordable, end-point systems management including: hardware and software inventory, software distribution, patch management, scripting and policy configuration, remote control, alerting, reporting and dashboards, security audit and enforcement, and an end-user self service portal.

Pricing for KBOX™ 1000 Systems Management Series Appliances starts at $9500 for 100 nodes.

About KACE™

KACE™, a privately held technology company, is the leader in IT automation appliances. The KBOX™ family of appliances deliver easy-to-use, comprehensive IT automation that is affordable and really work. The KBOX™ 1000 Series Systems Management Appliances automate routine and complex IT maintenance tasks for end-point nodes on a network. The KBOX™ 2000 Series Systems Deployment Appliances provide centralized provisioning and remote system recovery.

KACE is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and has offices in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Chicago, Illinois. To learn more about KACE and its product offerings, please visit http://www.kace.com or call 1-888-522-3638.

Other company names or products mentioned are or may be trademarks of their respective owners.