Systems-management start-up Kace this week announced a slew of upgrades to its appliances, which are designed to provide small and midsize companies with automated features for network devices, servers, desktops and other managed machines on their network.

Kace is upgrading its flagship appliance, the KBOX 1000 Series, with support for Solaris 9 and 10 (SPARC x86) as well as upcoming Windows Vista early next year, when customers begin transitioning to the operating system. Automated agent deployment capabilities, included in the upgrade, are aimed at further simplifying installation, the company says. Kace added 20 prepackaged scripts and policy wizards to enable security and configuration policy creation, and provided prepackaged security policies, such as disabling or restricting USB drives and enforcing Microsoft Outlook security setting, in this upgrade.

"The new KBOX 1000 Series appliances will be faster to deploy and will provide enhanced security policy management," said Marty Kacin, Kace president and CTO, in a statement.