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ClearCube CMS Includes Innovative "Grid Center" Feature

ClearCube Technology announced new functionality for its ClearCube Management Suite (CMS). The fourth generation of the software suite, which allows IT managers to remotely troubleshoot and manage PC Blades includes two new products, Control Center and Grid Center.

Control Center is a unique management console that allows even the most novice of IT administrators to use graphical scripts to manage PC Blades anytime, from anywhere in the world. Grid Center enables administrators to dynamically allocate PC Blade resources to I/Port users based on each individual's needs.

By deploying ClearCube, customers realize 99.9 percent uptime, stronger data and physical security, and at least a 40 percent reduction in support costs while providing end users with a full PC or workstation experience.

"A user's computer should be on demand and scalable to meet their current needs at anytime from anywhere," said Amir Husain, chief software architect for ClearCube. "With Grid Center we are able to adapt our PC Blade infrastructure providing a true end-to-end solution that is scalable from the user's desk to the most remote of locations. Control Center instills best practices across the IT department by making management consistent from location to location."

The ClearCube solution allows companies to take the computer off the user's desk, shrink it to a PC Blade and centralize the blades in a secure location. User Ports that sit at the desk are either directly connected or dynamically allocated to PC blades in the data center based on each user's specific needs.

The CMS 4.0 enables a "touchless IT" environment wherein IT managers can remotely manage and control global business PC deployments without making trips to the user desktop. New additions to CMS include:

Control Center is a unique management console that gives administrators a single point of access to the full suite of ClearCube software and includes easy to use asset management tools, a proactive alerting engine, and a graphical scripting environment that enables system self-healing.

Control Center features include:

• Remote systems management (organize, wake, shutdown and reboot PC Blades).
• One-to-many PC Blade health monitoring/alerting based on programmable triggers.
• Graphical creation of custom agents, simplifying scripting.
• Deployment of agent(s) to a single machine or the entire organization.
• Grid Center enables IT administrators to efficiently manage the virtual connections between their ClearCube I/Port end-users and their centralized PC Blades. Grid Center includes direct or dynamic allocation that lets administrators maximize their resource utilization by intelligently allocating I/Port users to pools of PC Blades. Dynamic user-to-blade assignments are made based on processor loading at the time a user logs on to the system.

Grid Center features include:

• Dynamic or direct allocation of I/Ports to PC Blades.

• I/Port discovery, health monitoring and update management.

• Simplified user logon.

• Administrator initiated connection redirection (i.e., switching) and sparing.

Additional upgrades to CMS include enhancements to the following remote management tools:

• Blade Manager provides PC Blade health monitoring and asset management on a one-to-one basis.

Blade Manager features include:

• No longer LANDesk based. Built from the ground up using a ClearCube designed architecture and code baseDirect integration with alerting engine built-in to ClearCube Control Center.

• Direct integration with ClearCube Switch Manager for out-of-band Blade monitoring of CPU temperature, voltage and fan speed.

• Full support for CIM and DMTF standards.

Switch Manager gives IT administrators the ability to eliminate downtime by immediately switching a user to a hot, spare PC blade in the event of a problem. By quickly switching users to spares in the event of a problem, rather than making them wait for a desk-side visit, Switch Manager enables uptime that exceeds 99.9 percent. New features include built-in management of ClearCube Cage assets including fans and power supplies, more flexible interfaces to third-party tools, and enhanced security and logon features.

Data Failover is a peer-to-peer backup and recovery tool-for use with PC Blades and standard box PCs. Data Failover is unique in that it virtualizes the unused hard disk space on users' Blades and PCs and makes it available for backing up user settings and data. New features include advanced disaster recovery management and visualization via multi-site backups and more efficient settings capture.

"Blade computing is one of the leading technologies that is expected to dramatically change the corporate desktop during the next three years," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst for the Enderle Group. "The current generations of PCs do not adequately provide the level of security and reliability required by today's enterprise and as a result, PC blades were created. ClearCube has moved sharply to address these needs by improving remote systems management, using RDP and direct connect solutions at the desktop to address user's needs, and increasing desktop PC reliability to a level consistent with server blades."