The Server Foundation suite includes four products which discover in detail what is running on all servers in the data center, actively manage and administer those servers, and ensure that mission-critical applications running on those servers are available. Veritas Cluster Server is the market-leading cross-platform clustering solution for high availability and disaster recovery. Veritas Configuration Manager provides holistic application discovery, accurate dependency mapping and real-time change tracking. Veritas Provisioning Manager automates the deployment and configuration of servers and applications including cross-platform patch management. Veritas Application Director provides runtime control of applications and virtual machines.

"Today's data center managers are embracing automation to maximize agility and control of their IT operations," said Mark Lohmeyer, vice president, Server Foundation product group, Symantec. "With sophisticated workflow and expanded configuration control capabilities, the latest release of Server Foundation addresses the challenges of increased complexity across the data center and represents a step forward in delivering on our vision for comprehensive data center automation."

Server Foundation's new workflow engine addresses these challenges by coordinating notifications and providing user input between IT groups, enabling users to define and enforce IT standards while driving task automation at the infrastructure level. All three layers of automation are easily controlled using a workflow modeler with an easy-to-use drag-and-drop interface.

While other tools focus on runbook automation (which automates action but is not flexible enough to accept user input) or process automation (which coordinates handoffs, but cannot reach into the infrastructure to do true task automation), Server Foundation enables both end user orchestration and infrastructure automation. Furthermore, it does this with deep automation capabilities not only at the server layer, but at the storage layer through integration with Veritas Command Central Storage.

The new Server Foundation enhancements are scheduled to be available in July 2007.