Surgient, the leading provider of virtual lab management software used to automate and accelerate the application lifecycle, today announced the release of version 5.4 of the Surgient Lab Management Platform. With support for the leading virtualization platforms, enhanced collaboration and integration capabilities and improved management tools, the Surgient Lab Management Platform is a common foundation enabling IT operations teams to provide managed, shared access to complex software configurations required in software development, testing, deployment and change management.  

“IT operations are rapidly adopting virtual lab solutions to drive improvements and cost-savings across the application delivery lifecycle,” said Theresa Lanowitz, founder, voke. “With the ability to deliver virtual software environments on-demand, the Surgient Lab Management Platform v5.4 helps IT more quickly respond to evolving business needs around application testing, training and demonstrations. Automating these application lifecycle processes frees up valuable IT resources and eliminates significant costs across the entire enterprise.”      

IT operations staffs are regularly tasked to create temporary replicas of production software configurations to support the activities of the application lifecycle, including software development, testing, evaluation and training. With Surgient’s virtual lab management software, IT operations provides access to these configurations through a centrally managed, shared service, eliminating manual provisioning work and delivering much higher utilization of expensive pre-production infrastructure. The enhancements in version 5.4 of the Surgient Lab Management Platform will enable customers to work with more complex application configurations, integrate with a wider array of application lifecycle management tools and supports more infrastructure configurations. 

"Continued focus on the acceleration of testing and deployment of mission-critical applications for our business remains a priority," said Jim Brennan, IT - Quality Assurance Manager of Raymond James Financial. "Version 5.4 of the Surgient Lab Management Platform has the ability to support more heterogeneous virtual lab environments and even blended labs. As we continue to streamline the software lifecycle, we look forward to Surgient assisting our IT staff to quickly roll out application changes, ensuring the continued satisfaction of our financial advisors and their clients."

The industry’s only virtual lab management solution to combine a unique self-service approach, enterprise-class scalability and integration with application lifecycle management tools, Surgient is accelerating the application lifecycle for many of the world’s largest companies. By requiring less time and manual effort to manage and meet line-of-business requests, Surgient enables organizations to reduce operating costs, enhance administrative control, maximize IT infrastructure utilization and improve business user satisfaction.

“Surgient virtual lab management serves as a common foundation supporting the activities of the application lifecycle – consolidating lab infrastructure under one central management console and providing IT operations with the visibility and control required to more efficiently manage the utilization of lab resources,” said Tim Lucas, president and CEO, Surgient. “Version 5.4 of the Surgient Lab Management Platform further extends our advanced virtualization management capabilities as the only solution to provide self-service provisioning and heterogeneous support for virtual and physical infrastructures including VMware, Microsoft and upcoming support for Citrix XenServer. Surgient virtual lab management software enables customers to more quickly realize the benefits of virtualization beyond the data center.”  

New and Enhanced Capabilities

The Surgient Lab Management Platform v5.4 features a number of infrastructure upgrades for enhanced openness, enterprise-class scalability and more flexibility for IT operations.

• VMware ESX 3.5 Support—adds support for the latest version of VMware’s virtual infrastructure platform. Supports blended lab infrastructure simultaneously, including ESX Server 3.0, 3.5 and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2.
• SOAP Integration SDK—enhances ability to integrate with enterprise application lifecycle management tools with new Web services integration API. Supports SOAP and command-line integration approaches for maximum flexibility.
• Updated Add-in for HP Quality Center—enhances integration with leading test management tool by improving support for more complex virtual network configurations as well as the ability to utilize testing tool hosts maintained outside the application deployment.
• Enhanced Storage Configuration Support—adds support for VMware VMFS storage using shared, distributed SAN LUNs. Supports high-performance management and delivery in all storage configurations including local storage, NFS, and shared, distributed VMFS partitions on a SAN.
• Enhanced Library Management—enables library content, including virtual machine images, to be easily moved to another location as a system grows or library needs change.
• Saving Selected Snapshots in a Configuration—enables users to select which servers they want to save when taking a snapshot of a multi-server configuration, in order to optimize storage space and further enhance reuse.
• Enhanced Session Sharing—provides new options for collaborative use of application configurations. Application configurations can be enabled for multi-participant access in a common session or for duplicate configurations to be created for isolated access by individual users.
• Mac OSX Client Support—enables Apple users to securely and remotely access virtual labs using a Firefox browser. Surgient remote-access support for Mac OS X includes the ability to access lab environments via Microsoft RDP or Citrix ICA.

Pricing and Availability

Surgient virtual lab management software, version 5.4, is now available. Pricing begins at $15,000 USD.