January 31, 2012

* vWorkspace 7.5 delivers leading solution in low cost desktop virtualisation via breakthrough, patent-pending scalability enhancements, direct Hyper-V integration, lightning fast provisioning, and advanced desktop virtualisation load balancing.
o Introduces direct support for Microsoft Hyper-V, including FREE Microsoft Hyper-V Server
o Deep integration with Microsoft Hyper-V in vWorkspace 7.5 provides complete virtual desktop lifecycle management for every aspect of the virtual desktop environment from creating, deleting, adding and updating, to changing memory configuration.
o Hyper-V Catalyst Components take Hyper-V performance and scalability to the next level by leveraging patent-pending technologies such as HyperCache and HyperDeploy to enable IOPS (I/O operations per second) reduction of up to 99 per cent, right out of the box, while enabling instantaneous provisioning of virtual desktops and RD Session Hosts (formerly Terminal Servers) across many hosts simultaneously:
* HyperCache enables caching of the most used blocks of a golden image to memory, allowing virtual desktops to only retrieve requested data from disk when not found in cache.
* HyperDeploy lets virtual desktops be provisioned instantaneously without waiting for the golden image copy to complete. It also limits network utilisation while still allowing instantaneous provisioning.
o Further reduces the cost of desktop virtualisation by allowing seamless use of local storage (DAS) and removing the need for expensive SAN storage.
o Enables provisioning of a fully functional virtual desktop in seconds due to the new vWorkspace Instant Provisioning technology.
o Quest Software recently conducted a cost and performance analysis for vWorkspace 7.5 using Login VSI, the standardised benchmark for VDI and SBC environments used by key vendors in the desktop virtualization space.  Standardised cost scenarios against top competitor’s offerings allowed Quest Software to pinpoint the key areas of efficiency, and identify an overall cost savings of 33 per cent VDI CapEx cost per user.

* New vWorkspace 7.5 Desktop Clouds simplify desktop virtualisation to deliver unparalleled elasticity and maximum business agility to customers ranging from enterprise to SMB.
o Deliver the best possible performance for virtual desktops with advanced load balancing schemes, and lets the customer add capacity in only a matter of seconds.
o Requires very little administrative effort for ongoing desktop maintenance, taking only minutes to update hundreds or thousands of desktops to a new version of the corporate golden image.

Other key new features include:
* Incorporates LAN and WAN support for Microsoft Lync / Office Communicator and other VoIP applications, expanding the reach of desktop virtualisation projects.
* Offers two-factor authentication support for all vWorkspace Connectors adds an extra layer of security for users connecting from their choice of devices.
* Full RD Session Host Lifecycle Management from the vWorkspace Management Console provides all the benefits of VDI and applies them to RD Session Host, letting one server image be created and deployed in a fraction of the time of manual replication, and reducing costs associated with maintenance, support and storage.

Jon Rolls, vice president, product management, User Workspace Management, Quest Software, said, “Quest vWorkspace 7.5 introduces a game-changing set of features and advances to let companies of all sizes adopt desktop virtualisation by taking advantage of one of the lowest cost solutions available. In fact, Quest Software’s research tells it that vWorkspace 7.5 could save organisations as much as 33 per cent of their VDI CapEx cost per user compared to competing products.  Combine that strong value proposition with automated Desktop Cloud management, WAN support for Lync/Communicator and automation around Session Host/Terminal Server deployment and you have a compelling, industry-leading offering.”

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About Quest Software
Quest Software (Nasdaq: QSFT) simplifies and reduces the cost of managing IT for more than 100,000 customers worldwide. Our innovative solutions make solving the toughest IT management problems easier, enabling customers to save time and money across physical, virtual and cloud environments.  For more information about Quest solutions for administration and automation, data protection, development and optimisation, identity and access management, migration and consolidation, and performance monitoring, go to www.quest.com. 

Quest, Quest Software and the Quest logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Quest Software in the United States and certain other countries.  All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

January 27, 2012

Secure Copy is a powerful, comprehensive data migration and management solution that automates the copying of data between file servers without the use of agents or scripts, and enables the copying of files and folders, NTFS permissions, file shares, local users and groups and compression settings.

IT administrators rely on Secure Copy to complete data and permissions migrations during server upgrades and simplify server consolidations or facilitate organisational moves to NAS or SAN devices.

Secure Copy is the core of an array of Quest Software products that, used together, streamline the entire data migration and management process, covering pre-migration analysis, reporting and cleanup tasks, post-migration verification and reporting and ongoing data management and maintenance.

Secure Copy 6.0 includes new enhancements so the product can accommodate strategic initiatives within even the most demanding IT environments. New features include:

* Logging and reporting – Secure Copy expands the functionality with new pre-defined reports, which are available in various view output formats, and provide detailed information about migration tasks with a click of the mouse. A new dashboard, more detailed summary, and Logs views assist IT administrators by providing a better, more easily accessible snapshot of migration projects.

* Job management – Secure Copy brings a number of enhancements to job management, which provides a new and improved user experience, along with a re-designed user interface and job option categories. These new features provide an easier way for the IT administrator to confidently manage specific job options for a given migration.

* Copy performance – Secure Copy now works with Volume Shadow Copy Services so data migrations can begin from a fixed point in time with a snapshot state, letting servers or files be migrated without taking applications offline, and with less impact to end users. New bandwidth throttling functionality now added to the existing, powerful multithreaded engine reduces the potential for possible network performance delays and increases the speed of job to completion. Native 64-bit support further improves migration performance.

Michael Tweddle, senior director, Product Management, Quest Software, said, “Conversations with customers tells Quest Software to expect a significant increase in data migration projects as companies across various industry sectors look to update legacy systems and gain a competitive advantage by leveraging the latest technology. With Secure Copy 6.0, Quest Software aims to help those customers streamline the often time-consuming and challenging migration process. Automation between Windows file servers and devices and new reports dwarf functionality in other solutions, letting admin ensure that migrations were successful and security was maintained.”

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About Quest Software
Quest Software (Nasdaq: QSFT) simplifies and reduces the cost of managing IT for more than 100,000 customers worldwide. Our innovative solutions make solving the toughest IT management problems easier, enabling customers to save time and money across physical, virtual and cloud environments.  For more information about Quest solutions for administration and automation, data protection, development and optimisation, identity and access management, migration and consolidation, and performance monitoring, go to www.quest.com. 

Quest, Quest Software, and the Quest logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Quest Software in the United States and certain other countries.  ScriptLogic and Secure Copy are trademarks or registered trademarks of ScriptLogic Corporation in the United States and certain other countries. All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

​January 11, 2012

The newest release lets users take real-time snapshots of an Oracle database and safely store them in a NetVault FastRecover Server. In the event of a corruption or data loss, end users can access the Oracle application data within seconds after a restore is initiated.

Using the product’s built-in replication feature, Oracle data can also be sent over a wide area network from one NetVault FastRecover server to another, delivering effective protection for remote and branch offices (ROBOs), and letting companies implement a cost-effective disaster recovery strategy.

In addition to Oracle, NetVault FastRecover also provides backup and Virtual On-Demand Recovery for Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, and Windows file-system data.

NetVault Fast Recover 4.5 lets customers integrate CDP technology with their existing backup software. Using CIFS export functionality, users can back up datasets stored on a FastRecover server using almost any data backup software, including Quest Software’s own NetVault Backup, as well as a host of third-party solutions such as Symantec NetBackup and Backup Exec, CommVault Simpana, and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager.

Continuing Quest Software’s vision to deliver an integrated data protection portfolio, NetVault FastRecover now also integrates with Recovery Manager for Exchange, letting customers search for and extract individual mail items from a NetVault FastRecover dataset.

Additional enhancements in NetVault FastRecover 4.5 include extended platform support for Windows 7.

Walter Angerer, senior vice president and general manager, data protection, Quest Software, said, “With more company data than ever before being classified as mission critical by SMBs and enterprises alike, prolonged periods of downtime have become unacceptable, meaning solutions that enable rapid recovery will play a major role in modern data protection strategies. With the release of NetVault FastRecover 4.5, Quest Software has made it easy for customers to integrate CDP into their existing data protection portfolios and take advantage of its patented Virtual On-Demand Recovery techniques.”

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About Quest Software, Inc.
Quest Software (Nasdaq: QSFT) simplifies and reduces the cost of managing IT for more than 100,000 customers worldwide. Our innovative solutions make solving the toughest IT management problems easier, enabling customers to save time and money across physical, virtual and cloud environments.  For more information about Quest solutions for administration and automation, data protection, development and optimisation, identity and access management, migration and consolidation, and performance monitoring, go to www.quest.com. 

Quest, Quest Software, NetVault and the Quest logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Quest Software in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.

The product helps users understand, manage and secure multiple SharePoint installations from a single product whether on-premises, in the cloud, or a hybrid of both.

Site Administrator for SharePoint gives users an overview of their existing environment by providing metrics, trends and other insights into Office 365 usage, data growth, and storage distribution, which lets organisations efficiently manage their SharePoint Online licenses.

As organisations adopt this technology, one key area of focus will be maximising efficiencies. Quest’s Site Administrator empowers SharePoint administrators to understand if that investment is being used, or needs to be expanded, by aggregating license and storage information from across all site collections and displaying it through centralised charts and reports.

As more organisations consider moving to SharePoint Online, many will deploy proof-of-concept and pilot projects that result in hybrid environments, spanning both on-premise and cloud deployments. Site Administrator makes it easy for businesses to centrally monitor and manage their environments regardless of whether SharePoint is based on-premises, online, or both.

Bill Evans, vice president and general manager, SharePoint business unit, Quest Software, said, “With this first-to-market Office 365 reporting capability, Quest Site Administrator for SharePoint will help IT managers be confident as they take the first step to the cloud. This single tool helps them understand and manage their existing on-premise environments and prepare for migrations to SharePoint Online in Office 365. Once there, users will better understand the value of their new environments, fostering maturity and growth in the market for hybrid and cloud environments.”

Kristina Kerr, group product manager for SharePoint, Microsoft Corp., said, “Quest Site Administrator for SharePoint provides customers with a quick view of the way Office 365 subscription resources are being used. SharePoint customers can use it to aggregate data from across multiple site collections to produce an easy-to-view report which helps them maximise their investment in Office 365.”

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About Quest Software, Inc.
Quest Software (Nasdaq: QSFT) simplifies and reduces the cost of managing IT for more than 100,000 customers worldwide. Our innovative solutions make solving the toughest IT management problems easier, enabling customers to save time and money across physical, virtual and cloud environments.  For more information about Quest solutions for administration and automation, data protection, development and optimisation, identity and access management, migration and consolidation, and performance monitoring, go to www.quest.com. 

Quest, Quest Software and the Quest logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Quest Software in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.

With the continually increasing consumption of mobile devices and cloud computing solutions, enterprise IT departments can quickly lose control of their corporate networks. Coupled with reduced budgets, IT administrators are often tasked to do more with less, keeping networks secure and performing optimally with fewer resources and less budget.

MessageStats provides a single solution to reduce the complexity of email reporting and analysis across legacy and newly implemented platforms. From a single interface for Microsoft Exchange, OCS, Lync Server 2010, Microsoft Online (BPOS and Office 365), OWA, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, Sendmail/Postfix, and Quest Archive Manager, thousands of organisations use MessageStats daily to get essential insight about these environments. This knowledge helps them to boost operational efficiency, maintain top messaging performance, defend Service Level Agreements, simplify migrations, and meet compliance demands.

MessageStats provides detailed insight into the entire messaging system. It provides an inventory of the current environment and helps administrators track and forecast server growth so they can plan effectively for storage acquisitions and upgrades. MessageStats can track email quotas, message sizes, public folders, distribution lists, contacts, and mailbox configuration and use. MessageStats even helps administrators optimise the environment by identifying unused accounts, mailboxes, and servers, as well as underused stores, devices, and storage.

Armed with these capabilities, IT administrators can view, analyse and control data wherever it is, to gain a better understanding of data consumption levels and quickly identify any patterns or reports that indicate a potential issue with network performance or security.

The ability to use MessageStats to automate these tasks means IT spends less time creating reports, and more time ensuring the corporate network is secure and performing at an optimal level.
MessageStats has a rich history that aligns with Microsoft developments over the course of the last 10 years.

Nick Nikols, vice president and general manager, Windows Business Unit, Quest Software, said, “The continued innovation of MessageStats over the past decade has met the needs of more than 17 million users who needed help completing a wide variety of projects – everything from assessing the need to support a mobile device platform, to analysing the impact and size of assets to be migrated to a new messaging platform. Quest Software is proud to have been the source of this help for 10 years, and plans to continue innovating to meet the messaging challenges of the future.”

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About Quest Software
Quest Software (Nasdaq: QSFT) simplifies and reduces the cost of managing IT for more than 100,000 customers worldwide. Our innovative solutions make solving the toughest IT management problems easier, enabling customers to save time and money across physical, virtual and cloud environments.  For more information about Quest solutions for administration and automation, data protection, development and optimisation, identity and access management, migration and consolidation, and performance monitoring, go to www.quest.com.

Quest, Quest Software, MessageStats and the Quest logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Quest Software in the United States and certain other countries.  All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Quest Software is building on the success of its recently launched QPC channel program to help partners worldwide use an integrated engagement model across the company’s entire solution offering, including identity and access management, application performance monitoring, data protection, administration and automation, migration and consolidation and  development and optimisation.

Since QPC’s July 2011 launch, Quest Software has been actively migrating its worldwide partner base, starting with more than 600 partners who have been classified as Elite or Premier. The remaining partners are classified at the registered level and will be working with Quest Software’s global network of distributors.

Reinforced by clear rules of engagement and a predictable investment model for pricing, discounts, services and opportunity management, the program provides unprecedented support and infrastructure to partners around the world.

Over the past three months, Quest Software has made strides in empowering partners to build profitable businesses within its solution specialisations, bolstered by robust training and enablement, around-the-clock business-critical support services for Elite and Premier partners, and access to Quest Software’s knowledge base, product documentation, updates and key downloads.

According to IDCi, specialisations are essential in any modern partner program framework, as they make it possible for partners to drive their own businesses and ensure effective positioning, sale and deployment of the right solutions for their customers.

Michael Sotnick, vice president, Worldwide Channel and Alliances, Quest Software, said, “The response to Quest Partner Circle has been overwhelmingly positive, and partners are taking full advantage of the global structure to extend their businesses into adjacent solution areas. The Quest Partner Circle structure now serves as a strategic component of our go-to-market planning worldwide.”

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About Quest Software
Quest Software (Nasdaq: QSFT) simplifies and reduces the cost of managing IT for more than 100,000 customers worldwide. Our innovative solutions make solving the toughest IT management problems easier, enabling customers to save time and money across physical, virtual and cloud environments. For more information about Quest solutions for administration and automation, data protection, development and optimisation, identity and access management, migration and consolidation, and performance monitoring, go to www.quest.com. 

Quest, Quest Software and the Quest logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Quest Software in the United States and certain other countries. All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

i IDC, Quest Software Launches Unified Partnering Strategy: Quest Partner Circle, doc #229295, July 2011

Ian Hodge, managing director – Australia and New Zealand, Quest Software, said, “The IT community is responding to explosive demand for mobility, collaboration and social networking technologies. At the same time, virtualisation and cloud computing are reshaping how and where applications and computing power are managed and delivered. The implications on communications, security, provisioning, and systems management are enormous.

“How organisations are addressing these opportunities and challenges are some of the most important questions the IT community faces today.”

Quest Software’s ten predictions for technology trends and practices in 2012 are:

1. SaaS growth will help drive wider adoption of cloud services. Although SaaS offerings cover the spectrum of business and technical applications, shared business services such as messaging, customer relationship management (CRM) and human resources are the most popular solutions.

Quest Software anticipates that the SaaS market will continue to see rapid growth over the next several years, particularly as cloud service providers overcome security and compliance concerns to accelerate acceptance.

2. Cloud service providers must overcome key concerns to accelerate acceptance. Public cloud services raise significant concerns over compliance, security and access management controls. Concerns include reliance on cloud provider performance to control risks, ensuring cloud services are compliant with corporate policies, the ability to trust vendors to provide required levels of security, availability and support, the ability for users to bypass internal IT controls, and excess spending on subscriptions.

While not insurmountable, these concerns must be recognised and allayed through better tools and practices, improved auditability and solution certification to build visibility and trust before cloud service providers will be able to make significant inroads into organisations with no plans to adopt cloud services.

3. Microsoft Hyper-V will make inroads in overcoming VMware’s market dominance. VMware vSphere is currently the dominant hypervisor. While VMware has historically been viewed as more robust and feature-rich than Microsoft Hyper-V, more organisations are willing to pilot and deploy Hyper-V as an alternative due to its improving features and incorporation within Server 2008 R2. Given the success of production deployments by early adopters and the emergence of its first evangelists, Quest Software expects interest in Hyper-V to accelerate.

While Microsoft is unlikely to match VMware’s dominance any time soon, Quest Software believes Hyper-V adoption will slowly erode the market share currently enjoyed by VMWare and position Microsoft as a player in the virtualisation market. Further, Quest Software predicts that 2012 will be the year of innovation in Microsoft Hyper-V 3.0 and significant growth in customer numbers.

4. Lingering issues will create opportunities for “virtualisation-aware” solutions. While most organisations are satisfied with their virtual environments, backup, performance monitoring and storage monitoring remain problematic. Quest Software believes this dissatisfaction is due to the slowness of legacy backup tool providers to adapt to provide simpler, easy-to use offerings that capitalise on the benefits of virtualisation. Backup concerns should lessen in the future as niche providers take advantage of this gap to offer special purpose backup tools for virtualisation.

Likewise, performance monitoring is an issue as traditional monitoring tools lack “virtualisation awareness,” increasing the difficulty of managing rapidly growing production workloads. Without this awareness, monitoring tools assess a virtualised server as a physical server and miss hypervisor-only metrics that are crucial for optimising virtual environment performance. Divisions between storage teams and virtual environment administrators are the likely cause for the dissatisfaction with storage monitoring efforts with each group having only limited visibility into the overall performance of the highly complex storage subsystems shared across virtual environments. This will spur the interest in and need for “virtualisation-aware” solutions.

5. Cloud workloads will remain mostly isolated for the foreseeable future. While the growth of private and public cloud usage ensures that more organisations will be supporting hybrid cloud environments, concerns about security, control and technology maturity lead most organisations to isolate internal and external workloads. As a result, cloud-bursting, the practice of moving (“bursting”) excess workload to an external cloud on an on-demand basis when processing demands exceed internal data centre resources has yet to gain any traction within IT organisations.

6. Google and Microsoft will strongly challenge Apple’s lead in the IT mobile market. Adoption of new mobile technologies is proceeding at an unprecedented rate. The new technologies are evolving rapidly and, unlike the desktop market, the battle to become the standard is far from over. When deciding which platforms to support, IT administrators face the challenge of balancing current market share and capabilities against long-term potential. Weaknesses will be fixed over time, and administrators will have to manage the devices that will be chosen by the majority of their end users. While Apple iOS is currently in the IT leadership position, Google Android’s high ranking is likely a reflection of where the market will head as its sales increase and capabilities improve. Likewise, Microsoft remains a strong contender with Windows 7 (and upcoming Windows 8).

Given the rapid explosion of popularity in the mobile and apps worlds, the stakes in this market are especially high. Although Research in Motion’s Blackberry had a great run from its first-to-market advantage in the smart phone market, that run is now waning. Microsoft is undoubtedly feeling the pressure to gain a dominant position, since mobile devices and tablets pose a very real threat to the now-legacy PC era upon which Windows was built. Apple’s innovation and Google’s mass appeal and open Android architecture only serve to raise the stakes. New players such as Chinese Huawei are standing in the wings, more than happy to ride the mobile wave into the enterprise, and beyond.

7. Cloud applications, compliance and mobile devices will drive a reshaping of corporate identity & access management (IAM) strategies. New compliance mandates, the growing use of cloud-based applications, and the proliferation of smart phones and tablets are causing IT organisations to rethink their identity management and user provisioning strategies to control support costs and better manage security. Quest Software finds that corporate managers want greater transparency in the IAM activities that support compliance-mandated governance processes. Meeting these concerns will result in many changes in how enterprise IT organisations operate and automate on-premises identity systems. As organisations seek better decisions about how best to control access, Quest Software predicts growing adoption of content classification systems to help identify sensitive data.

Other expected changes include:
a. increasing deployment of federation technologies and automated provisioning/de-provisioning systems to support cloud-based applications
b. greater support of user-driven self-service IAM functions to reduce IT costs
c. the implementation of more granular and flexible policy-driven authorisation systems for applications and files to extend controls beyond simple group membership.

8. Active Directory will continue to dominate, and the IAM framework market will see modest growth. Active Directory is the identity management platform of choice for enterprises, and Quest Software expects this dominance to increase slightly as some of the remaining users of Novell eDirectory shift to Active Directory. Given Active Directory’s market acceptance, Microsoft’s aggressive Enterprise Agreement sales and the TEC for Directory & Identity focus, it is not surprising that usage of Microsoft’s Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) easily exceeds the usage of competing IAM  frameworks such as IBM Tivoli Identity Manager, Oracle Identity Manager, CA Identity Manager and Novell Identity Manager. Quest Software expects modest growth in both Microsoft and non-Microsoft framework categories over the next year.

9. Office 365 will see slow adoption, except among small businesses. Cloud-based email solutions offer organisations an increasingly attractive alternative for outsourcing their corporate email systems, including much of their operational overhead. Although on-premise systems, notably Microsoft Exchange, still dominate, cloud-based email solutions are catching on with early adopters. Vendors are using Office 365 at double the rate of IT organisations – this is as expected since vendors need to understand the platform to prepare their own solutions and encourage customers to consider and adopt the new Microsoft platform.

Quest Software predicts that Microsoft will find traction for Office 365 in the small business community, and that this is where most of Microsoft’s growth will come from. Security and privacy concerns will continue to yield slow growth in the medium and large enterprise arenas. Quest Software expects Google to continue to struggle in demonstrating its ability to understand the enterprise. The weak performance of Google, and the less than- stellar success of Microsoft, serve to prop the door wide open for new challengers such as VMware’s Zimbra to enter the race.

The cloud email market is still very much in its infancy and has much maturing to do. Widely regarded as one of the fastest growing Microsoft solutions in history, SharePoint has enjoyed tremendous adoption and deployment rates over the years. While Quest Software predicts that the pace of the growth will slow over time, SharePoint will continue to be on a high growth trajectory overall. This will, for most companies, prompt active investigation into how best to leverage SharePoint for business-critical activities and specific applications and let SharePoint continue to grow its collaboration market share.

10. Employees will face increased monitoring of their social networking activities. Social networking provides yet another challenge to corporate and government administrators seeking to monitor and control the flow of information that can impact their organisations. Employee use of social networking applications such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn blurs the boundaries between personal and business environments, and has implications for corporate branding image, regulatory compliance, personnel policies, information security and work productivity. Social networking policies are becoming a greater topic of interest as social media gains in popularity.

Most organisations are running blind without any visibility into the breadth and depth of social networking use, and abuse, within their employee base. Over time, reporting solutions will be implemented and more granular controls will emerge. Further, niche vendors who provide granular levels of control for companies subject to compliance regimes also are emerging, and that’s a positive development for the market. Many organisations will not care about social networking until a PR or legal crisis tied to social networking technology hits and shines the spotlight on the problem.

Hodge said, “Quest Software is constantly working to understand the issues and needs of the IAM, Exchange, SharePoint, virtualisation and cloud communities through interaction with its customers, review of the latest information from technology forums, and thoughtful analysis by its team of technology experts. This helps Quest Software build better products and provide organisations with knowledge and best practices to improve their productivity and efficiency.”

-ENDS-

About TEC
Presented by Quest Software, TEC is the premier annual conference for expert users of Microsoft technologies. Celebrating TEC’s 10th year of delivering advanced education and networking, TEC 2011 included four concurrent conferences focused on Microsoft’s application and infrastructure offerings.

About the TEC Survey
Quest Software conducts annual surveys at TEC that focus on technology trends, best practices, current issues and priorities.

In the 2011 survey, delegates were invited to provide answers to a series of in-depth questions. These questions included social networking, mobility and cloud computing topics, and the responses capture important insights regarding adoption rates and impact on systems management, communications, knowledge sharing and security administration.

A total of 214 delegates responded to the survey.

About Quest Software
Quest Software (Nasdaq: QSFT) simplifies and reduces the cost of managing IT for more than 100,000 customers worldwide. Our innovative solutions make solving the toughest IT management problems easier, enabling customers to save time and money across physical, virtual and cloud environments.  For more information about Quest solutions for administration and automation, data protection, development and optimization, identity and access management, migration and consolidation, and performance monitoring, go to www.quest.com. 

Quest, Quest Software and the Quest logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Quest Software in the United States and certain other countries. All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Six steps to better governance
1. Discover users and resources. The first step involves an infrastructure inventory of important data (or access points to that data), which can and often does reside on multiple platforms, Network-Attached Storage (NAS) devices, SharePoint sites, Active Directory group memberships, mobile computing devices, etc.  In particular, it’s also important to identify the resources of unstructured or orphaned data.

2. Classify data and assign rights. Data must be classified in terms of confidentiality, correlation to regulations (e.g. credit card numbers), overall relevance, and archive requirements. Appropriate owners of business data should be reviewed and assessed to ensure they are in accordance with security policies.

3. Assign data owners and approvers. Assign appropriate business owners based on roles, locations and other attributes. Separation of duties must be taken into consideration to assure compliance and security.

4. Audit and report on access. Schedule and perform continuous business-level attestation of access to ensure accuracy, compliance and security.

5. Automate access requests and problem remediation. Automating access fulfilment workflows based on access rights and the requestor’s role in the organisation is ideal for security purposes. Automated responses that remediate deviations can proactively prevent potential threats or breaches.

6. Prevent unauthorised changes. Lock down certain data, groups or access rights that should never be altered. All changes should be logged in a secure depository that cannot be manipulated to ensure a high level of forensics analysis.

Proactive protection and control of critical data
* Automated, multi-platform data access governance can remove the barriers to satisfying compliance requirements, while preventing unauthorised access to sensitive data residing on physical and virtual file servers, NAS devices, SharePoint sites, Windows file servers, and more.
* Improved access control is a key driver in reducing security threats, as well as preventing them in the first place.
* Comprehensive, 360-degree visibility into company-wide user access gives IT, business managers and data owners the insight needed to enforce policies and comply with regulations without creating an adverse impact on operations.

Nick Nikols, vice president and general manager, Identity, Security and Windows Management, Quest Software, said, “Quest Software’s view of end-to-end data access governance blends discovery, control and automation to help business decision-makers determine who needs access to business critical data, whether it resides in structured formats within applications and databases or in unstructured formats within documents and spreadsheets, in order to meet ever-evolving business demands without compromising security or compliance requirements.”

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About Quest Software
Quest Software (Nasdaq: QSFT) simplifies and reduces the cost of managing IT for more than 100,000 customers worldwide. Our innovative solutions make solving the toughest IT management problems easier, enabling customers to save time and money across physical, virtual and cloud environments.  For more information about Quest solutions for administration and automation, data protection, development and optimisation, identity and access management, migration and consolidation, and performance monitoring, go to www.quest.com. 

Quest, Quest Software and the Quest logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Quest Software in the United States and certain other countries.  All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

i Gartner Security and Risk Management Lessons, Courtesy of WikiLeaks by Mark Nicolett, May 23, 2011

Toad for Cloud Databases is now available as a fully functional, commercial-grade product, for free, at www.quest.com/toad-for-cloud-databases.  Toad for Cloud Databases lets users generate queries, migrate, browse, and edit data, as well as create reports and tables in a familiar SQL view.  By simplifying these tasks, Toad for Cloud Databases opens the door to a wider audience of developers, letting more IT teams experience the productivity gains and cost benefits of NoSQL and big data.

Quest Software first released Toad for Cloud Databases into beta in June 2010, making the company one of the first to provide a SQL-based database management tool to support emerging, non-relational platforms. Over the past 18 months, Quest Software has continued to drive innovation for the product, growing its list of supported platforms and integrating a UI for its bi-directional data connector between Oracle and Hadoop.

Quest Software’s connector between Oracle and Hadoop, available within Toad for Cloud Databases, delivers a fast and scalable method for data transfer between Oracle and Hadoop in both directions. The bidirectional characteristic of the utility lets organisations take advantage of Hadoop’s lower cost of storage and analytical capabilities. Quest Software also contributed the connector to the Apache Hadoop project as an extension to the existing SQOOP framework, and is also available as part of Cloudera’s Distribution Including Apache Hadoop. 

Toad for Cloud Databases today supports:
* Apache Hive
* Apache HBase
* Apache Cassandra
* MongoDB
* Amazon SimpleDB
* Microsoft Azure Table Services
* Microsoft SQL Azure, and
* All Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)-enabled relational databases (Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, DB2, etc.).

Guy Harrison, senior director of research and development, Quest Software, said, “Quest Software began development for Toad for Cloud Databases more than three years ago, knowing that the way organisations manage data, and the database management industry itself, was about to change dramatically. Quest Software continues to develop its technologies to address both today’s market needs and what it anticipates is on the horizon, a dual focus that lets it improve the performance, productivity, and, ultimately, operational value of its users. With support for accessing seven emerging big data technologies, and the familiar interface that has won Toad millions of loyal users, the community edition of Toad for Cloud Databases will let Quest Software keep running fast at adding new features and bringing more value to the developer community. ”

Charles Zedlewski, vice president of products, Cloudera, said, “It’s a top priority for Cloudera to bring more users to the Hadoop platform by partnering with software companies like Quest Software to provide tools and applications that are both functional and familiar. We’ve enjoyed a very strong technical collaboration with the Quest Software team. Quest’s Toad for Cloud Databases product delivers a robust and mature tool into the hands of developers who want to gain access to big data capabilities.”

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About Quest Software
Quest Software (Nasdaq: QSFT) simplifies and reduces the cost of managing IT for more than 100,000 customers worldwide. Our innovative solutions make solving the toughest IT management problems easier, enabling customers to save time and money across physical, virtual and cloud environments.  For more information about Quest solutions for administration and automation, data protection, development and optimisation, identity and access management, migration and consolidation, and performance monitoring, go to www.quest.com. 

Quest, Quest Software, Toad and the Quest logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Quest Software in the United States and certain other countries.  All other names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

The combination of vRanger and HP StoreOnce Backup Systems provides VMware customers with high-performance, deduplicated backups and fast, reliable recovery from disk.

Using vRanger’s comprehensive protection for VMware environments in tandem with HP StoreOnce Backup Systems lets customers manage ever-increasing volumes of data by optimising disk space usage and consolidating backups, while ensuring faster restore of critical data for disaster recovery.

The use of vRanger with HP StoreOnce Backup Systems dramatically reduces the size of backup files by leveraging a host of data-reduction technologies.

vRanger supports several space-saving mechanisms, including VMware Change Block Tracking, incremental and differential backups, and Quest Software’s patented active block mapping technology, which quickly scans block maps to back up only the changed blocks with active data.

These space-saving technologies reduce the size of the backups sent to the StoreOnce Backup System, which further reduces the physical size of the backup with inline deduplication.

For disaster recovery, the HP StoreOnce Backup System reduces bandwidth requirements for data replication to a remote location. vRanger backups also can be integrated with backup applications that support copying or migrating data from the HP StoreOnce Backup System to tape, delivering an added layer of disaster recovery and archiving capabilities.

John Maxwell, vice president, data protection product management, Quest Software, said, “Trends such as dramatic growth of mission-critical data and widespread adoption of virtualisation have SMBs and enterprises alike looking for ways to do more while spending less. Quest’s technology alliances with leading data protection hardware providers help them achieve that goal. The combination of vRanger and HP StoreOnce Backup Systems gives customers the tools they need to implement an end-to-end data protection strategy that ensures full protection of their growing VMware virtual environments.”

Sean Kinney, director, Product Marketing, Storage, HP, said, “Companies are seeking business continuity solutions that increase performance without increasing their data centre footprint or system administration costs. The HP StoreOnce Backup Systems together with Quest vRanger dramatically shrinks data recovery times and enables customers to get more out of their existing data centre investment by optimising disk space.”

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About Quest Software, Inc.
Quest Software (Nasdaq: QSFT) simplifies and reduces the cost of managing IT for more than 100,000 customers worldwide. Our innovative solutions make solving the toughest IT management problems easier, enabling customers to save time and money across physical, virtual and cloud environments.  For more information about Quest solutions for administration and automation, data protection, development and optimization, identity and access management, migration and consolidation, and performance monitoring, go to www.quest.com. 

Quest, Quest Software and the Quest logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Quest Software in the United States and certain other countries. vRanger is a trademark or registered trademark of Vizioncore Inc. in the United States and certain other countries.  All other trademarks and registered trademarks are property of their respective owners.