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
Number of 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.

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 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 was one of the top 5 of the strategic developments from Symantec up to 2012.

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, as well as the Symantec Workspace Virtualization, ex Software Virtualization Solution (SVS)
- Each Suite is composed of several solutions ^[3]
Altiris Server Management Suite (SMS)
Altiris Asset Management Suite (AMS)
All the products above are included into the Total Management Suite (TMS), now changed to Altiris IT Management Suite (ITMS)
Symantec ServiceDesk (SSD) is sold separately of the ITMS.
Wise Package Studio (WPS) is ended, to be replace with FLEXERA AdminStudio software suite.
Symantec Mobile Management (SMM)
- is based the common Symantec Management Platform, alias the Notification Server,
- but is also able to work on Microsoft System Center.

The platform includes an API and an 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 .NET architecture. Version 7.5 was delayed into 2013.

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 Tallinn, Estonia. The 7.2 release of SMP will be delivered by these new teams.^[4]

Versions history

Because of two different product architecture, the Deployment Solution (DS) was provided in both version 6 and 7. Version 6 of DS is now end of life but the technology has been merged with Ghost Solution Suite from version 3.0. It is possible to do an in-place upgrade from DS 6.9 to GSS but a new license is required as GSS is a separate product.

Versions Notification Platform (NS), renamed Symantec Management Platform (SMP) from 7th version, including DS 7:
- 5.5: Released 2002-01-10, EOSL 2006-02-31 (End Of Support Life)
- 6.0: 1st 6.0 Released 2004-01-31, latest 6.0 sp3 EOSL 2014.03.07 (So patch solution should still updated until 2014), EOL 2011-03-07 (End Of Life)
- 7.0: 1st 7.0 Released 2008-09-18, latest 7.0 sp5mr4 released 2011-04-29, EOSL 2015.09.18
- 7.1: 2011-03-07, 7.1.2 Released 2011-12-14, (EOSL 2016-03-09).
  - latest update: 7.1 SP2 MP1.1 from 2012-09 ^[5]
- 7.5: 2013-10-07, (EOSL 2020-10-07)
- 7.5 SP1 : Released 2014-02-06
- 7.6 : Released 2015-03-02
- 8.0 : Released 2016-03-01
Deployment Solution (DS) 6 stand alone:^[6]
- 5.6: Released 2003-04-18, EOL 2003-11-27 (End of Life when release 6.0)
- 6.0: Released 2003-11-27, EOL
- 6.1: Released 2004-03-31, EOL
- 6.5: Released 2005-09-01, EOL
- 6.8: Released 2006-09-14, EOL
- 6.9: Released 2008-03-10, EOL
- 6.9 SP6 Released 2013-11-22, EOL 2016

User groups

See

References

External links

Symantec Corporation

People	Gary Hendrix (founder) Gordon Eubanks (1990s CEO) Dan Schulman (Chairman) Michael Brown (CEO)

Current products	Backup Exec Disaster Recovery Advisor Enterprise Vault NetBackup Norton ConnectSafe Norton Family Norton Insight Norton Security Norton LiveUpdate Norton Safe Web Norton Utilities pcAnywhere SONAR Symantec Endpoint Protection Veritas File System Veritas Storage Foundation Veritas Volume Manager

Discontinued	Drive Image Ghost GoBack GrandView MORE Norton 360 Norton AntiBot Norton AntiVirus Norton CleanSweep Norton Commander Norton Internet Security Norton PC Checkup Norton Personal Firewall Norton SystemWorks NUM Note-It PartitionMagic Q&A SQZ! SUM Symantec C++ THINK C THINK Reference Time Line Visual Café WinFax

Acquisitions and mergers	4FrontSecurity @stake Altiris Binary Research BindView Breakthrough Software Brightmail Central Point Software Company-i Delrina Dynamic Microprocessor Associates Fast Track Fifth Generation Systems Leonard Development Group LIRIC Associates MessageLabs Mountain Wave Nexland ON Technology Peter Norton Computing Platform Logic PowerQuest Quarterdeck Quest Development Recourse Technologies Relicore Riptech SecurityFocus SLR Systems Sygate Technologies TurnTide Urlabs Veritas Software Whitewater Group WholeSecurity Zortech

Category Commons

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