Landscape's newly exposed API provides access to all of the functionality with Landscape itself. By writing scripts that call Landscape features through the API, administrators can assemble automated workflows, written in Python or some other shell-friendly programming language, that run across Landscape and other system management tools, such as Puppet or Nagios.

For instance, a script could be written so that Nagios, an open source infrastructure monitoring tool, sends alerts to Landscape whenever a server goes offline. Upon receiving this alert, Landscape can, in turn, alert the appropriate system administrators, or take some other corrective action.

"The API allows for quite a bit of integration of different popular tools in the enterprise. No single tool does everything, so you have to coexist with lots of other tools, particularly legacy," software, Lucifredi said.

The bare-metal provisioning allows an administrator to install a copy of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, along with associated software, on a server devoid of any software. Ubuntu's Metal-as-a-Service (MAAS) technology uses Intel's PXE (Preboot Execution Environment) protocol, which allows computers to be started up from over a network. An administrator could use this tool to quickly install hundreds or even thousands of copies of Ubuntu at remote locations, even over a WAN (wide area network).

The new software is also designed to easily manage software repositories. An organization may maintain their own repositories of the software they use, especially open source software. This allows them to test and modify the updates before they are installed on production machines.