Optinuity Introduces C2O Software For Operations Process Management

Software Significantly Reduces Applications Support Costs by Automating Routine Processing Tasks, Administration, Problem Resolution and Compliance Procedures

Bethesda, Md. - January 31, 2005 - Optinuity, Inc., a provider of Operations Process Management software, today announced the official launch of the company and availability of its flagship product, C2O™. Currently, operations staff at large organizations with distributed, heterogeneous IT environments spend up to 80% of their time maintaining existing mission-critical applications. C2O answers the critical need for an Operations Process Management (OPM) platform that facilitates the coordinated development, validation, automation, and management of traditionally error-prone and time consuming applications support procedures performed repeatedly by operations personnel.

By providing IT operations with the platform required for a disciplined approach to the development, deployment, and documentation of repeatable procedures, C2O streamlines applications processing tasks such as distributed job execution and report generation, speeds problem resolution and disaster recovery, and simplifies administrative tasks such as restarting services or performing maintenance.

"IT complexity has reached a point where traditional staff-intensive support methods are breaking down," said Scott Stouffer, CEO of Optinuity. "Organizations are routinely devoting 80% or more of their staff to maintain existing applications, leaving little resources available to support new strategically important IT initiatives. Furthermore, when problems occur, the human-intensive resolution processes take too much time and often introduce additional errors contributing to significant financial losses from application failure."

Currently, applications support consists of ad-hoc, disjointed processes and undocumented scripts developed and executed by IT experts within their siloed systems. C2O institutionalizes the knowledge of these experts, freeing them for other work, and enables operations teams to develop and execute their own best-practice processes that integrate all IT functions and incorporate a total business-service or application-wide view. Unlike pre-packaged solutions that provide inflexible, partial responses, C2O procedure development and execution occur within a common framework that allows customization, rapid prototyping, and easy validation. The net result is dramatic improvements in staff efficiency for day-to-day operations and increased applications availability due to fewer incidents and shortened resolution times. C2O also meets demanding enterprise requirements for easy deployment, security, scalability, and controls compliance.

"Our IT operations staff felt that the Optinuity® software was easy to deploy and that it freed them from day-to-day, repetitive tasks," said Walter Lavogiez, Information Systems Manager for Norbert Dentressangle. "After the pilot phase and the initial five days of training, we were able to automate some of our particularly cumbersome tasks. Since October, we have been able to automate a large proportion of our procedures and are now studying the automation of other processes that were not initially targeted." Norbert-Dentressangle, a European transport and logistics company, was able to reduce operations support staff requirements by 40% within months of implementing C2O.
Key Features of C2O:
Graphical Procedure Flow Design

The C2O Console uses an intuitive 'drag and drop' interface to easily map out complex operations tasks to automate with repeatable results. Using a server-agent interaction model, flows can incorporate decision logic to tie together disparate IT resources and allow for process interdependencies, as well as contain break points for human input or security authorization. C2O provides CLI, SNMP, SMTP, SQL, SOAP, SSH, and API connector interfaces to link together customized scripts, networked applications, databases, servers and network components in distributed heterogeneous application environments. A built-in simulation feature allows for step-by-step validation of procedures.

Pre-validated flows are then automatically distributed to designated machines and can be executed and modified in real-time directly through the C2O Console. Flows are documented online as they are created replacing the need for paper-based procedure binders. All flow executions are logged to facilitate procedural audits and training. With C2O, system experts can easily capture and share their process knowledge with operations support staff in a secure and reliable manner.

Operations Control Dashboard
Procedures are executed, monitored and managed through C2O's Console that makes flows available 24/7 for invocation by operations personnel or for completely automated response. The Console delivers valuable performance data on the status of any flow and allows for operations staff to modify run time procedures dynamically on-the-fly. In the event that an exception occurs during run time, C2O provides variable inspection and recovery points allowing quicker resolution and eliminating the need to start the procedure over from the beginning. Security permissions are associated as parameters with each process object, which eliminates the need for shared administrative pass codes and improper rights, improving an area of vulnerability in many IT organizations.

Enterprise Scalability
C2O deploys in a peer-to-peer distributed architecture that accommodates process failover and redundant data repositories. This distinct capability is important since certain incidents may cause some of the infrastructure to fail, and that may include the hosts supporting the automation software itself. In addition, C2O supports the many varied OS platforms, databases, network equipment, and other elements that comprise heterogeneous back-end computing infrastructure. The security model incorporates digitally-signed (DES3) inter-process messaging between all servers and agents. Initial customers have successfully used C2O with complex procedures involving dozens of steps, numerous logic co-dependencies, and recurring thousands of times daily.

Optinuity is initially targeting large organizations within financial services, healthcare, transportation logistics, and electronic commerce verticals because of the critical nature of their applications to their business. Prices for the software will start at $150,000 for a typical multi-server application environment. The C2O product is now commercially available.

About Optinuity
Founded in October 2004, Optinuity®, Inc. provides Operations Process Management (OPM) software that automates the human-intensive administrative and problem resolution tasks performed by operations personnel in support of mission critical applications within large organizations. Optinuity®'s software institutionalizes IT expert knowledge and allows application support personnel to respond autonomously to a broad range of situations, freeing valuable IT resources and assuring continual operations. C2O, the flagship product for Optinuity, is based on a time-tested process automation engine that is installed in over 130 customer sites worldwide. Optinuity investors include New Enterprise Associates, Venrock Associates, and Mid-Atlantic Venture Funds.

Contact:
Jayson Schkloven
Merritt Group (for Optinuity)
703-556-6829
schkloven@merrittgrp.com