The automated provisioning software will serve as utility computing engine for the new Intel-based Servers and Blades which aims to enable users to harness the full computing power of a flexible, modular computing platform.

With this partnership, users of a variety of Intel Enterprise Blade Server and Itanium processor-based server hardware building blocks can use the included VERITAS provisioning software to automate the configuration and deployment of multiple servers at once. This would eliminate the traditional method requiring a system administrator to configure servers manually and individually.

Industry analyst firm IDC shows worldwide blade server shipments growing 342 percent between 2002 and 2003. IDC predicts that by 2007, 35 percent of all servers sold in the United States to be blade form factors, while IDC estimates the worldwide market for blades to grow to more than $6 billion by 2007.

VERITAS OpForce software provides management, automatic policy-driven provisioning, and dynamic scaling of IT resources to meet changing business needs. VERITAS provisioning software helps the management of data centers by providing building blocks for utility computing in an Intel-based Windows or Linux environment. By automating the provisioning of server resources when and where they're needed, VERITAS OpForce helps organizations move to a utility computing model, in which IT services are delivered in a measurable, flexible manner that align to the changing needs of the business.

"Easy to use software that works across Intel-based hardware building blocks is key to the success of modular computing," said Abhi Talwalkar, vice president, Enterprise Platforms Group and general manager of the Platform Products Group at Intel. "The combination of Intel Enterprise Servers and Blades with VERITAS OpForce provisioning software gives OEMs a more powerful platform for their customers to better manage exponential growth and maximize the availability of their mission-critical environments."

"The growth of Intel-based servers in enterprise applications signals the need for automation and provisioning software to efficiently manage and deploy many modular systems simultaneously," said Mark Bregman, executive vice president of product operations, VERITAS Software. "The powerful combination of Intel-based servers with VERITAS OpForce automated provisioning software helps customers quickly and efficiently deploy, configure and manage servers, enabling the move to delivering computing power as a utility."