CA focuses its future on integration
CA focuses its future on integration
Computer Associates has launched a new strategy to combat the complexities of integrating old software/hardware systems with new ones, which is becoming more difficult as the industry keeps evolving.
CA has launched their "Managing On-Demand Computing Initiative" to take control of this escalating problem.
They believe that infrastructure management is the foundation for providing a better service over all to the customer. CA sees a refocus needed from cultural divisions that work with separate tool sets, separate skill sets and separate world views, towards a more integrated organisation (like how the nation-state evolved from the feudalism of the Middle Ages).
Today, the cultural and process "divides" separate the network specialists from systems and applications specialists; operations centre from the service desk and help desk; e-business organisations from traditional data-centre organisations.
These great divides need to evolve to a new level of awareness and commonality.
Sanjay Kumar, the Chairman and CEO for Computer Associates, said: "We have been living in a multi vendor environment for the last quarter of a century. This is not so easy to manage, but we are focusing on changing that difficulty. We need more integrated solutions. We can compare it to the car industry. In the past, vendors provided different parts for the car, but these could not always be used with every car. Now we need to provide just one car, and parts which can changed in this car which everybody will have.
"We need to figure out how to build the technology to satisfy the customer, so at every detail, from security to the ability to attach new components can all be joined together far more easily. This means that everybody involved has to working in the same direction, and less as separate identities."
He believes that a "quiet revolution" is happening, and there needs to be more effective business control of the full infrastructure, including cross-domain (network, systems, applications) visibility and automation, focus on service management and business impact.
The CA states that deeper levels of integration are directly relevant if infrastructure is to become meaningful as a management reality. Without the ability to integrate and analyse data effectively across different sources, the attempt to manage "the infastructure" becomes an all but pointless abstraction.
CA has made a bold entrance into this evolving market with its "Managing On-Demand Computing" launch. This involves combining the directions of new products with a well-thought-out architectural evolution to satisfy user requirements. HP and IBM have also introduced these concepts and called them "Adaptive Management" and "Autonomic Management".
All of them involve the need to adjust dynamically to shifting business and infrastructure requirements.
It is not a single idea, but a structured interrelationship of ideas that serves to define product attributes, as well as customer or user environments. The vision is a balance between technological attributes and perceived evolution of roles and functions within IT.
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