Uplogix Monday released Version 2.0 of Envoy, the company"s network management solution. The new version boasts improved availability, management security, and integration, according to the Austin, Texas-based company.

Geared toward distributed networks, Envoy is designed to automate network configuration, maintenance, diagnosis, and recovery operations. It can address 95 percent of the issues that regularly cause service outages and degradations in distributed networks, thus reducing the costs not only of network downtime but network maintenance, as well, the company said.

Envoy appliances are set up on the network edge; the boxes communicate with a central management server. Administrators can manage all the appliances, push out policy changes and patches, and perform other tasks from a single Web GUI.

"[Envoy"s] applicability to the network"s edge is unique and serves a generally unaddressed need, namely reducing remote support costs for branch office networks that are becoming increasingly more complex and more demanding," said Dennis Drogseth, vice president, Enterprise Management Associates.

A significant differentiator between Envoy and competing network-management product is its Uplogix"s Intelligent Out-of-Band (IOOB) architecture, which enables the Envoy to function independently of the network. Should the network connection between an Envoy and the central server go down, they will continue to communicate via alternative means, such as wireless or satellite, depending on the setup.