News

Quest Offers FastLane DM/Manager for Free

• By Scott Bekker
• 01/31/2001

In an attempt to get users to migrate to Windows 2000, Quest Software Inc. is offering a migration product for free.

“We’re going to give our product away for free for the first twelve month of this year,” says David Waugh, vice president of product marketing, Microsoft Solutions for Quest Software. He hopes that armed with new tools, administrators will be eager to deploy Windows 2000. Waugh says that the cost of Windows 2000 migration tools is keeping some users from migrating.

“The market is slow to migrate to Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000,” Waugh says. Quest hopes to create customers by getting users moved to Windows 2000.

Waugh also hopes the promotion will generate interest for other Quest products.

In addition to an improved price point, DM/Manager 5.5 also offers new features from previous versions. The new Migration Guide simplifies migration of users and groups to Active Directory, with its step-by-step interface. Quest improved support for SQL Server migration and remote migration tracking. It now integrates with the Active Directory Connector, adding Exchange 2000 features. Finally, the Migration Mapping Technology console was added, giving administrators the ability to consolidate data from a variety of sources.

Users can register and download DM/Manager 5.5 at the Quest website from now until June 30th^t. “You have twelve months to migrate as many users as you can to Windows 2000,” Waugh says. The promotional licenses expire at the end of the year.

Quest bought FastLane Technologies last year, integrating FastLane properties into the product line. Waugh says that when FastLane was an independent company, it was inconceivable that it would give away a product like this. “Now that FastLane is a part of Quest, we have an opportunity to take risks like this,” he says.