Cassatt, which plays to the corporate fear of entrusting enterprise applications to external service providers, has updated its Active Response software.

The stuff helps companies automate and transform existing data center resources into cloud-style computing environments using the heterogeneous virtual and physical IT resources that already exist inside their corporate firewalls - turning them into internal clouds.

As part of the update Cassatt has extended its VM support, previously limited to VMware and Citrix, to Parallels' Virtuozzo Containers. Microsoft's Hyper-V will come next.

The 5.3 update includes smarter policy control in failure scenarios for physical servers.

In the new version, customers can set more granular, application-specific policies to set shutdown timing for servers that applications are no longer using. And, if servers fail to follow shutdown policies, the Cassatt software can now either attempt additional ways to power off the equipment or leave it running for later administrator inspection. The smarter policies, reportedly added at customer request, mean less manual effort in managing physical servers, keeping operating expenses down.

Cassatt is supposed to deliver the same operational efficiency, fault tolerance and energy savings promised by external clouds, but without nail biting over security, compliance, lack of control or the costs and delays required to change or replace current applications.

The new Parallels support is targeted at data centers with multiple virtualization technologies, which, according to Cassatt's research, involves over two-thirds of all IT organizations either now or down the road.

Cassatt CEO Bill Coleman says, "Our customers tell us that despite efforts at standardization, having multiple virtualization technologies in a data center is and will continue to be a reality that they must plan for. Combine this fact with the extreme pressure that the economy is putting on IT operations, and the result is a keen interest in data center efficiency....With Cassatt, customers can control and optimize the many types of hardware, operating systems, virtualization and network resources that they already have."

Active Response 5.3 is available now with pricing the same as it was. The Standard Edition starts at $200, Premium Edition at $1,250 and Data Center Edition at $2,500, all per managed machine.

The company's Active Profiling Service is priced by the number of servers to be profiled, the number of days of profiling, plus the cost of professional services personnel. The minimum starting point is profiling 150 servers for 30 days, plus one consultant, which starts at $40,500.