Puppet Labs Partners With Leading Vendors to Deliver Automation to Networking and Storage

PORTLAND, OR--(Marketwired - Jun 24, 2014) - Puppet Labs, the leading provider of IT automation software, today announced the Puppet Supported Program, a certification program that enables customers to extend the benefits of automation across their entire data center. Puppet Enterprise is already the leading server automation solution, and this new program enables customers to speed application delivery using a single solution to automate not only servers and software, but also network and storage devices. Together with launch partners Arista Networks, Brocade, Cisco, Cumulus Networks, Dell, EMC, F5, Huawei and NetApp, Puppet Labs is certifying Puppet Enterprise for platforms and devices. This collaboration will allow organizations to deploy software faster and with fewer errors, iterate more quickly, and rapidly adapt to fast-changing business needs.

Virtualization, cloud technologies and IT automation have dramatically reduced the time it takes to provision servers and quickly scale to meet business demands. But in most cases networking and storage services are still provisioned manually, creating a bottleneck that makes it harder to realize the full benefits of advanced data center technologies.

"SDN can help alleviate this issue by enabling automated provisioning of network services associated with a workload, and Gartner estimates this can reduce provisioning times for new applications by more than 80 percent, reducing typical turnaround times from weeks to days," according to Gartner, Mainstream Organizations Should Prepare for SDN Now, by Andrew Lerner and Ronni J. Colville, March 18, 2014. "In addition, this automated provisioning leads to higher network reliability and security because manual provisioning mistakes are significantly reduced."

Integrating Puppet Enterprise with network and storage devices brings the benefits of automation to networking and folds it into overall management of the entire data center. Now, joint customers will be able to take full advantage of the efficiency and agility that cloud computing and virtualization can deliver, building infrastructure and practices that allow them to deliver better software faster to their own customers while maintaining resiliency, reliability and security.

"With the Puppet Supported Program, we're extending our software automation leadership into networking and storage, allowing organizations to break down the barriers between IT silos that have traditionally created bottlenecks and delays," said Luke Kanies, founder and CEO of Puppet Labs. "Our goal is to extend the reach of automation to every device in the data center, making it easier than ever for organizations to deliver great software quickly and reliably. That's a big competitive advantage in today's technology-driven business environment."

The Puppet Supported Program demonstrates a joint commitment to equipping customers with the tools to manage their infrastructure at the highest levels of reliability and performance. Puppet Labs and its partners have committed to creating joint solutions that enable automation of platforms and devices via Puppet Enterprise. The Puppet Supported Program's rigorous certification process delivers customers the benefits of fully tested and supported automation of all leading hardware in today's data centers.

"Leveraging Puppet Labs' IT automation solution, Nexus switches automate network provisioning, patch management and configuration tasks. Automating these manual and error-prone tasks gives DevOps teams the ability to accelerate application delivery," says Colin Kincaid, VP Marketing, Cisco. "Together with Puppet Labs, we're providing joint solutions that enable customers to create an agile infrastructure that will meet changing business needs with the highest levels of reliability and performance."

"EMC strives to be at the forefront of developing automated software defined data center architectures and solutions. EMC and Puppet Labs previously collaborated in the development of Razor, a first in kind automated bare metal server provisioning solution. EMC's collaboration in the Puppet Supported Program is the next step in helping to ensure we provide our customers with high quality, validated automation solutions as they accelerate their journey to the cloud," said Ed Walsh, CTO Evangelist, EMC Corporation.

To learn more about network automation, register for our webinar on July 1. For more information on the Puppet Labs Supported Partner Program, please contact bd@puppetlabs.com.

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About Puppet Labs
Puppet Labs, Inc. is the leader in IT automation. Puppet Labs software provides system administrators the operational agility, efficiency and insight they need to proactively manage dynamic infrastructure, scaling from tens of servers to thousands, both on-premises and in the cloud. Thousands of the world's leading organizations use Puppet Labs software to configure and manage their IT infrastructure, including Bank of America, Cisco, Citrix, eBay, NYSE, PayPal, Salesforce.com and WebEx. Based in Portland, Oregon, Puppet Labs employs more than 300 people. The company is backed by investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Google Ventures, VMware, Cisco, True Ventures, Radar Partners, and Emerson Street Partners. To learn more, please visit PuppetLabs.com.