scVENUS is delivering innovation and enhancements in four areas:

Instantly productive clients

scVENUS now makes it possible to transform a new computer from blank hardware to a client with a defined productive status in a single installation step: The operating system and the necessary applications are installed, the client is configured and the machine is instantly integrated into the cluster as an scVENUS client.

Extended Windows functionality

Windows functionalities have also been extended in the new version. As a result, a software depot server is now available for Windows. Administrators can use the server to adapt the software distribution for Windows programs in the scVENUS cluster to suit their needs. Version 2.4 also supports Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 platforms. Thanks to this enhancement, scVENUS can now distribute msu packages as well as msi software packages. What's more, a large number of new Windows functions related to accounts, processes, registry, etc. can be accessed by scVENUS scripts to further extend automation in administrative processes.

Improved overview

Various new functions help administrators to build an overview of their computing environments faster and with more details. With the Job Log Browser, they e.g. can now answer the question: Which administrative activities have been executed on a defined client? Monitoring in scVENUS 2.4, in turn, offers access to license log files. Thus, the administrator can now at a central point comfortably evaluate information that has so far only been available in a distributed way on the clients.

Enhanced security

Security has also been further enhanced in the new version. For example, multi-administrator environments allow greater precision in specifying the administrative tasks that individual administrators are permitted to execute. Furthermore, the communication between configuration and software depot was secured by SSL. And last but not least, reporting data can be protected against unauthorized access. These are just a few of the many major and minor enhancements that have been implemented.

Please read the release notes for details on all the improvements.