Linux System Management Company Challenges LinuxWorld Attendees to Jump in the Driver's Seat and Win $1,000

BELMONT, Calif., Aug. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- System administrators, start your engines! Open Country, a new software company focused on enabling the manageability of the Linux-powered enterprise, is offering two $1,000 prizes to the individuals who can bring eight Linux systems into a managed steady state in the shortest amount of time. Tasks that take experienced system administrators over an hour and a half to perform are expected to be completed in less than three minutes by experienced system administrators and non-system administrators alike at Linuxworld.

"OC-Manager is so easy to use, you don't need to be a Linux expert or even a professional system administrator to deploy and manage Linux systems from the leading providers like Red Hat, SuSE, Sun, Mandrake and Fedora," said Laurent Gharda, chief operating officer for Open Country. "We're going to put our money on the table -- and give the fastest system administrator and the fastest non-system administrator one thousand dollars each for proving that in two to four minutes, someone who has never seen OC-Manager before can perform tasks that would otherwise take a very skilled Linux system administrator an hour and a half to do."

Designed to reduce the cost, time, and complexity of managing Linux deployments ranging from as few as five systems to as many as 5,000, OC-Manager 2.0 is an integrated, second-generation product suite that can be installed and self-taught in less than two hours. Its highly intuitive user interface allows existing IT teams, including those with Windows-only experience, to install and automatically provision, manage, and support Linux servers, blades, desktops and appliances within hours. This makes it possible for IT organizations to improve responsiveness and reduce costs with minimal disruption.

To illustrate the ease-of-use and quick learning curve of its solution, contestants will perform a set of standard system administration tasks using the OC-Manager product suite, namely bringing several systems into a management steady state. These tasks are: 1. Group eight Linux systems to be managed as one (the "Finance" group).

2. Schedule the daily backup of all systems in the group.

3. Schedule the daily software inventory of the group.

4. Schedule the daily hardware inventory of the group.

5. Create an application stack "Golden Master."

6. Deploy the Golden Master to all systems in the group. The contest will be held in the Desktop Linux Consortium Pavilion (Booth #1481) throughout LinuxWorld -- and the winners will be announced at noon (12:00 p.m.) on the last day of the show, Thursday August 5. Contestants will be classified as either System Administrator level or Non-System Administrator level, based on their background. The contestants from each level with the fastest times by the end of the show will each win a cash prize of $1,000.

Designed to pay for itself in days or weeks rather than months or years, OC-Manager easily adapts to an organization's existing infrastructure -- and is the first solution to offer companies the choice of managing all major Linux distributions without having to worry about retraining or investing in new IT personnel.

OC-Manager performs bare-metal operating system provisioning, software and patch management, hardware and software asset management, backup and restore, remote system administration, and remote desktop takeover functions, allowing a single integrated solution with a streamlined management dashboard to replace many point solutions, each with different user interfaces, databases and training requirements.

Open Country's OC-Manager 2.0 is available today for managing systems using Linux from Red Hat, SuSE, Sun, Mandrake, Fedora, and other versions of Linux. The software's introductory pricing is under $9 per system per month, with volume discounts available. To request a trial of the software, go to http://www.opencountry.com/company/register.html About Open Country

Open Country helps enterprise customers, managed service providers, OEMs and system integrators manage their IT infrastructure by providing integrated system provisioning, management and support software for Linux servers, blades, desktops and appliances. Open Country's solutions allow customers to build, manage, and support their Linux systems throughout their own or their customers' organizations, ensuring the availability, scalability, reliability, performance, and security of the IT infrastructure anywhere in the world. Open Country products can be deployed in hours and typically pay for themselves in weeks. For more information, visit http://www.opencountry.com NOTE: Open Country and OC-Manager are trademarks of Open Country Inc. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other product names, service marks, and trademarks mentioned herein are trademarks of their respective owners.