CA, formerly Computer Associates, used its delayed CA
World user conference last week to outline a major refresh of 26
products based around a common IT architecture.
Delegates at the Las Vegas event were told the revamp would
provide a process-led approach to the management of enterprise IT
systems.
CA president and chief executive John Swainson outlined the
company's plans for its flagship Unicenter systems management
software.
The strategy, called Enterprise IT Management (EITM), is a
vision for unifying and simplifying management of IT across the
enterprise.
CA said EITM would help IT directors control costs, optimise
service levels, manage risk, and align IT investments with the
business.
The company's goal is to provide a way for IT departments to
manage disparate IT systems as a single entity.
"As long as the management of technologies remains fragmented,
IT-related costs and vulnerabilities will be higher than necessary,
and organisations will not realise the full economic value of their
IT assets," said Swainson.
The strategy involves integration and sharing of management
processes, data and user interfaces, according to the company.
John Holden, senior research analyst at Butler Group, said, "The
management of IT is growing in significance as all the complexities
of the network infrastructure make management and control
impossible without intelligent proactive tools."
He said CA, BMC, Hewlett-Packard and Tivoli were all adapting
their products to take a process-led approach to enterprise IT
management.
Holden said this approach would allow users to deploy IT systems
more quickly and easily and provide a stepping stone towards best
practice standards for managing IT departments, such as the IT
Infrastructure Library.
CA's 26 EITM-enabled products will share a common architecture
called the CA Integration Platform, which provides a workflow
engine, management database, shared policies and a consistent user
interface.