KACE, the leading systems management appliance company, today announced the latest version of its award-winning KBOX Systems Deployment Appliance. The new release, now shipping, enables enterprises of all sizes to smash cost and complexity barriers by providing centralized and automated provisioning of remote systems. The new appliance works in both physical and virtual settings and offers new virtual remote appliance features including integrated virtual infrastructure and bandwidth throttling for even easier deployment of systems at remote offices, as well as new packaged post deployment scripts that eliminate manual work.

Remote provisioning of laptops, desktops, and servers can be a costly and complex task for IT organizations. KACE makes remote provisioning easy by automating the entire deployment process, eliminating time-consuming and error-prone manual tasks. The new KBOX Systems Deployment Appliance deploys software at a fraction of the price and complexity of software-only solutions from vendors such as Altiris, LANDesk, and also Microsoft.

"Unlike the competition, KACE listens to our customers’ needs, resulting in innovative and effective solutions tailored to the mid-market," said Marty Kacin, CTO and co-founder of KACE. "Today’s release not only positions us another step in front of the competition, it gives customers the ability to eliminate manual work, saving them loads of time and money."

KACE continues to separate itself from costly software-only solutions by offering the only all-in-one, complete management solution. Software-only solutions require separate servers for all major functions, such as reporting, database, and deployment. The KBOX Systems Deployment solution performs all of these critical functions from the ease of a single appliance. In addition, KBOX has the ability to manage multiple remote offices without the need for dedicated hardware at those locations through the KBOX Virtual Remote Appliance. These capabilities dramatically reduce the resources necessary to manage PCs at a multi-site organization, thus eliminating the need for additional hardware and software, and also dedicated staff. Disparate systems can be managed remotely from a single appliance helping customers cut down on cost and complexity - a key differentiator software-only solutions cannot touch.

Tennessee-based Battle Ground Academy is one such KBOX Systems Deployment Appliances customer who finds great value in remote systems management.

"We save a tremendous amount of time provisioning remote systems with the automated capabilities of our KBOX Systems Deployment Appliance," said Andrew Peercy, administrator of IT Operations for Battle Ground Academy, one of the oldest kindergarten through 12th grade independent institutions in the nation. "I no longer need to spend precious time and money transporting systems to and from our remote sites just to image them. We are now able to leverage the power of our KBOX at our remote sites with the same ease of our primary site."

A summary of new features and updates for the latest KBOX Systems Deployment Appliance release includes:

• Enhanced Virtual Remote Appliance capabilities make deploying operating systems at remote offices easier with a new integrated virtual infrastructure. The KBOX Virtual Remote Appliance can now simply be installed on almost any Windows server.
• Bandwidth Throttling makes it easy for administrators to minimize network impact when staging images to remote sites with slow links.
• KPE USB makes it easy to provision any remote machine from a centralized KBOX. KPE USB allows remote machines to boot into the KBOX Pre-boot Environment (KPE) on a USB drive and then deploy images or network OS installations from the centralized KBOX.
• Packaged Post Deployment tasks eliminate time-consuming, manual work required for post deployment activities, including system naming, Windows domain joining, and also Sysprep automation.
• The latest KBOX Systems Deployment Appliance also includes new platform support for Windows 2008.

KACE saves its customers both time and money. Systems managers from medium enterprises are often forced to wear many hats throughout the day to work on a myriad of IT functions. KACE helps consolidate these functions by providing a single appliance for all projects, while delivering easy-to-use, comprehensive systems management that is affordable. The KBOX family of appliances fulfills all of the systems management needs of a medium enterprise, from initial computer deployment to ongoing management and retirement.