Developer Autonomic Software released its cross-platform system Autonomic Network & Security Administration (ANSA) on Monday. ANSA provides a transparent method for IT administrators to quickly deploy critical software patches. Its architecture allows it to support thousands of cross-platform clients on a single ANSA inoculation server, which runs on Windows.
In addition to the inoculation server, the ANSA system includes a scanning engine that determines the make-up of all computers, including servers, connected to the network. Autonomic Software hosts a global update repository (GUR) that contains a database of patches, which can be pre-tested prior to deployment. Clients for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux and UNIX variants install the patches on their computers. A management console helps track patch deployments. ANSA pricing is US$35 per client, with a drop to $13.50 for networks with more than 2,500 clients, based on a three-year enterprise license. Education customers receive a 35 percent discount.