Altiris

Altiris Inc.

Type	Symantec Subsidiary
Industry	enterprise management software, IT asset management lifecycle management, service-oriented software management, systems configuration management
Fate	acquired by Symantec
Founded	1998
Headquarters	Lindon, Utah, United States
Key people	Gregory S. Butterfield Chairman and CEO, Stephen C. Erickson CFO
Products	Helpdesk Solutions, Carbon Copy Solutions, Barcode solution, Inventory Solution Wise Package Studio
Revenue	No longer disclosed
Operating income	No longer disclosed
Net income	No longer disclosed
Employees	No longer disclosed
Website	www.altiris.com

Altiris Inc. is a subsidiary of Symantec specializing in service-oriented management software which allows organizations to manage IT assets. They also provide software for web services, security, and systems management products. Established in 1998, Altiris is headquartered in Lindon, Utah, United States. Altiris has over 20,000 customers managing more than 3 million servers and 60 million desktops and laptops.

On January 29, 2007, Symantec announced plans to acquire Altiris and on April 6, 2007 the acquisition was completed.

Corporate history

Altiris was started in 1998 when Jan Newman and Kevin Turpin spun off the software arm of KeyLabs. KeyLabs was, and remains, a third party testing facility. The Altiris Software had been created at KeyLabs to manage the computers at KeyLabs and that software became the start of what is now Altiris. Altiris continues to develop software designed to help IT departments manage their networks and computers more efficiently.

Altiris continued to grow. In early 2000, Jan Newman who was then President and CEO brought in Greg Butterfield to take over the role of President and CEO. Under Mr. Butterfield's leadership, Altiris acquired Computing Edge in September 2000. Computing Edge's founder, Dwain Kinghorn, had come from Microsoft and helped to develop Microsoft's original Systems Management Server product (SMS). Computing Edge specialized in extending and enhancing with functionality that SMS lacked.

Altiris continued its market expansion by acquiring several other companies:

Acquisitions

• July 2002, Altiris acquired system backup and recovery technology from Previo (see Stac Electronics).
• December 2003 Altiris acquired application deployment specialist Wise Solutions, Inc.
• February 2004 Altiris acquired FSLogic. See Software Virtualization Solution
• September 2004 Altiris acquired Bridgewater Technologies.
• January 2005 Altiris acquired Tonic Software Inc.
• March 2005 Altiris acquired Pedestal Software, a software company that specializes in vulnerability assessment tools (SecurityExpressions and AuditExpress).
• February 2007 Altiris to be acquired by Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) ^[1]
• April 2007 Altiris acquisition by Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) completed.
• August 2009 Where are they now? Greg Butterfield, Dwain Kinghorn and other key former Altiris leaders and developers launched a new company that extends the Altiris Platform (now Symantec Management Platform) with Desktop Security Solutions. The company is Arellia and they provide Application Control and Local User and User Group password security.^[2]

Main Software products

The platform is one of the top 5 of the strategic developments from Symantec.

• Altiris Deployment Solution (DS)
  • The classic Deployment Solution 6.9 (eXpress) is still available,
  • in the same time the new DS 7.1 Web version, based the Symantec Management Platform.
  • Pcanywhere is now part of the DS.
• Altiris Client Management Suite (CMS)
  • This suite includes the previous DS, and is also based on the Symantec Management Platform.
  • and also the Symantec Workspace Virtualization, ex Software Virtualization Solution (SVS)
  • Each Suite is composed of several solutions, see http://www.symantec.com/business/products/family.jsp?familyid=altiris.
• Altiris Server Management Suite (SMS)
• Altiris Asset Management Suite (AMS)
• Symantec ServiceDesk (SSD)
• Wise Package Studio (WPS)
• All the products above are included into the Total Management Suite (TMS), now changed to Altiris IT Management Suite (ITMS)
• Symantec Mobile Management (SMM) is also based the common Symantec Management Platform, alias the Notification Server.

The platform is including API and SDK. Symantec is extending the platform to support other Symantec or partner products connections. The latest version of the platform is 7.1, on Windows 2008 R2, using the Microsoft Dotnet architecture.

In December 2011 the original team which developed the Symantec Management Platform (previously known as the Altiris Notification Server), based in Sydney, Australia was sacked in a cost cutting exercise. All future development on the Symantec Management Platform development was moved to low cost centres in Pune, India and Tallin, Estonia. The 7.2 release of SMP will be delivered by these new teams.^[3]

See also

• Systems management
• Network management
• System administration
• Configuration management

References

External links

• Altiris Official website
• Altiris Forums
• Altiris Forums - User Run
• Symantec Press Release Regarding Altiris