Oslo (January 1, 2009) – Following 5 years of research and development under the technical direction of its long time author Mark Burgess (a professor of Network and System Administration at Oslo University College), the recently formed support company Cfengine AS today released a major upgrade of the Open Source, self-repairing software cfengine based on its innovative Promise Theory technology.

Unlike would-be alternatives, cfengine is not about producing alarms and reports to notify about errors and misalignments in the Data Center: it is a fully self-repairing maintenance engine capable of fixing them without human intervention. Cfengine users know that systems are compliant and maintained even when humans are unavailable, because they have made all the important decisions in advance.

With probably a million existing cfengine installations already worldwide, this major upgrade will have a big impact in improving data center operations at some of the largest data centers in the world, says CEO Thomas Ryd.

Cfengine has always been at the leading edge of research in its field and one of the important innovations in the new release is integrated knowledge management. As a tool that separates human decisions from machine implementation, cfengine historically freed humans from manual labour to indulge in proactive decision-making and strategic planning – something that relies on clear enterprise knowledge. Cfengine 3 now integrates a knowledge engine based on ISO standard Topic Maps making it easier than ever to follow the strategic intentions behind data centers operations. Cfengine ties IT and business-processes together in a way many companies and compliance-auditors will find powerful and appealing, CEO Thomas Ryd continues.

Cfengine is not a quaint dashboard for users – it is a powerful engine for datacenter engineers. Version 3 introduces an innovative new language to the trusted technology, with a simpler syntax and sophisticated pattern description features. It brings technology to manage the essential large scale infrastructure and resource clouds of the next decade.

Cfengine 3 will work side-by-side with existing versions of cfengine to provide a minimum-disruption, incremental upgrade path to existing users. Gradual adoption has always been the cornerstone of cfengine's success, setting it apart from alternative disruptive roll-out systems. While other solutions require weeks or months of training with downtime and a major impact on existing infrastructure and applications, Cfengine works unobtrusively behind the scenes, according to Mark Burgess.

Cfengine AS added support and consulting services to the mix this year, with a strong business management team to complement Burgess's well known research credentials. CEO Thomas Ryd summarizes the main reasons for using cfengine 3 in Data Center Automation:

1. It is the only truly scalable self-repairing solution.
2. Its open source code base is broadly tested by a community of expert users.
3. Its state of the art technology for voluntary cooperation delivers scalability and security and users set their own pace for change.

cfengine to offer a proprietary licence

Oslo (August 20, 2008) – cfengine AS has today announced it will offer a proprietary licence for cfengine version 3.0.0.

Along with the release of cfengine 3.0.0, cfengine AS will offer third-parties the right to modify, implement or in other way integrate cfengine in other licensed software packages. In our quest to make cfengine the most usable software within configuration and automation, allowing third-parties to distribute, bundle and integrate the software, is an important and strategically correct decisions, CEO Thomas Ryd comments. This will not influence the free cfengine. Core cfengine software will still remain GPLed , Thomas continues.

Support & Consultancy available to cfengine-users

Oslo (July  25, 2008) –  by email, phone and onsite presence, cfengine now offers professional support to new and existing users of the open source software cfengine. Top-qualified cfengine-personnel are now ready to assist the cfengine-community, CEO Thomas Ryd announced today.

After 15 years, time is more than ripe. With our support-services available companies can feel confident both using and modifying cfengine, Thomas Ryd says. Given the software, we believe our support-services will make the difference and even more companies will decide to use cfengine, and use it more extensively than today. We also offer onsite consultancy and training-sessions, starting with a first training-session in San Diego,  November 2008 during the USENIX/LISA 08 conference.  ITIL-compliance, SOX-compliance, adaption,  Proof-of-concept, Assessments and adjustments of existing infrastructure and validation are among the  things our customers will request.