Surgient announced the release of version 5.4 of the Surgient Lab Management Platform. With support for virtualization platforms, enhanced collaboration and integration capabilities and improved management tools, the Surgient Lab Management Platform is a common foundation enabling IT operations teams to provide managed, shared access to complex software configurations required in software development, testing, deployment and change management.

“IT operations are rapidly adopting virtual lab solutions to drive improvements and cost-savings across the application delivery lifecycle,” said Theresa Lanowitz, founder, voke. “With the ability to deliver virtual software environments on-demand, the Surgient Lab Management Platform v5.4 helps IT more quickly respond to evolving business needs around application testing, training and demonstrations. Automating these application lifecycle processes frees up valuable IT resources and eliminates significant costs across the entire enterprise.”

IT operations staffs are regularly tasked to create temporary replicas of production software configurations to support the activities of the application lifecycle, including software development, testing, evaluation and training. With Surgient’s virtual lab management software, IT operations provides access to these configurations through a centrally managed, shared service, eliminating manual provisioning work and delivering much higher utilization of expensive pre-production infrastructure. The enhancements in version 5.4 of the Surgient Lab Management Platform will enable customers to work with more complex application configurations, integrate with a wider array of application lifecycle management tools and supports more infrastructure configurations.

"Continued focus on the acceleration of testing and deployment of mission-critical applications for our business remains a priority," said Jim Brennan, IT - Quality Assurance Manager of Raymond James Financial. "Version 5.4 of the Surgient Lab Management Platform has the ability to support more heterogeneous virtual lab environments and even blended labs. As we continue to streamline the software lifecycle, we look forward to Surgient assisting our IT staff to quickly roll out application changes, ensuring the continued satisfaction of our financial advisors and their clients."

Surgient offers a virtual lab management solution that combines a self-service approach, enterprise-class scalability and integration with application lifecycle management tools, and is accelerating the application lifecycle for many companies. By requiring less time and manual effort to manage and meet line-of-business requests, Surgient enables organizations to reduce operating costs, enhance administrative control, maximize IT infrastructure utilization and improve business user satisfaction.

“Surgient virtual lab management serves as a common foundation supporting the activities of the application lifecycle – consolidating lab infrastructure under one central management console and providing IT operations with the visibility and control required to more efficiently manage the utilization of lab resources,” said Tim Lucas, president and CEO, Surgient. “Version 5.4 of the Surgient Lab Management Platform further extends our advanced virtualization management capabilities as the only solution to provide self-service provisioning and heterogeneous support for virtual and physical infrastructures including VMware, Microsoft and upcoming support for Citrix XenServer. Surgient virtual lab management software enables customers to more quickly realize the benefits of virtualization beyond the data center.”

New and Enhanced Capabilities
The Surgient Lab Management Platform v5.4 features a number of infrastructure upgrades for enhanced openness, enterprise-class scalability and more flexibility for IT operations.

• VMware ESX 3.5 Support
• SOAP Integration SDK
• Updated Add-in for HP Quality Center
• Enhanced Storage Configuration Support
• Enhanced Library Management
• Saving Selected Snapshots in a Configuration
• Enhanced Session Sharing
• Mac OSX Client Support