IBM Accelerates Installation

ARMONK, N.Y. -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new provisioning software that will help accelerate the deployment time for Microsoft Windows Vista customers. The new IBM software reduces the time it takes to manually deploy or upgrade a computer, including an operating system deployment, to less than a minute.

Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment, based on technology from IBM's acquisition of Rembo, can help organizations automatically install or upgrade operating systems on thousands of servers, laptops and desktop computers simultaneously, eliminating the need for IT specialists to spend days or weeks installing software manually on each physical or virtualized computer.

Installing and configuring an operating system on a single computer can take more than an hour. Installing thousands of systems spread across a globalized IT environment can quickly cause labor costs to spiral out of control. Instead of physically installing the operating system with installation disks at every location, IBM customers can install operating systems from a centralized "dashboard" in a matter of minutes.

“Installing new operating systems is not something organizations do every day, or even every year, so their processes for doing so are likely outdated or nonexistent,” said Bob Madey, vice president of strategy, IBM Tivoli Software. “With Tivoli Provisioning Manager, clients can dramatically reduce the time and complexity of installing nearly any operating system, including Windows Vista and Linux.”

IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM)