One of the major themes at this year's CA World
conference is asset intelligence, stemming from infrastructure
management, as companies to move to the on-demand model of running
their ICT facilities.
Computer Associates International senior vice-president for
product development Mark Barrenechea said that this can only be
achieved if companies integrate the operation of their people,
products and processes.
He added that, in today's on-demand world, enterprises are
facing tremendous pressure to control expenditures and maximise
return on ICT investments, yet even relatively simple questions
about ICT resources, capacity, utilisation and costs can take days
to answer.
Barrenechea said that CA has developed next-generation asset
intelligence technology, which is dramatically changing the
management of ICT infrastructures. To take today's ICT effectively
into the future, chief information officer have as their top
priorities consolidation and standardisation, he added, and that
they need to optimise their processes to move to the next stage of
virtualising their ICT infrastructure before finally taking the
on-demand route.
To achieve this, CIOs have many challenges, and these are
primarily that their systems are too complex; there is too much
labour needed to integrate them, he said. They are also under-used
in most cases; service levels are very hard to set while, at the
same time, there is the problem of unlimited demand.
"It is more than clear to see that we are entering the age of
management software. This can be seen by the fact that most of the
big ICT vendors, such as IBM, Microsoft and Oracle, are about to
release new management platforms," he said.
Last year companies spent 40% more of their funds on management
applications than on applications for new software licences.
Barrenechea said infrastructure management will enable companies to
truly reap the real-time benefits that come with having on-demand
models.
"For a company to better use what it has, it has to identify it;
and, in order to do so, it has to virtualise it, this is all part
of the on-demand philosophy on which we are building our on-demand
applications."
Lastly Barrenechea said companies need to realise that people,
assets and policies are at the heart of good and effective business
processes. With ICT services also being one of CA's focus areas,
the company also announced a new management bundle for the exchange
technology - an exchange management solution.
Kaunda Chama writes for Computing South
Africa