CA teams with Cisco and delivers new cloud, virtualisation technologies

CA is expanding its partnership with Cisco and unveiling several new management products to improve cloud computing and virtualisation deployments, the company said in a series of announcements Monday at CA World in Las Vegas. The new products are based partly on technology acquired in CA's recent buying spree, in which the company purchased vendors 3Tera, Oblicore and Cassatt.

CA also said it is changing its name slightly from CA, Inc. to CA Technologies, to reflect a broad strategy of managing "IT resources from the mainframe to the cloud, and everything in between."

FAQ: Cloud computing, demystified

CA's partnership with Cisco includes integration of CA system management software with Cisco's Unified Computing System, letting IT pros control the Cisco technology from within the CA management interface.

CA's Spectrum Automation Manager, a server provisioning and automation tool; CA's eHealth Performance Manager, which tracks device performance; and CA's Spectrum Infrastructure Manager, which performs network configuration management, fault isolation and root cause analysis, will all work with Cisco's UCS.

Separately from the Cisco partnership, CA is announcing a variety of software tools to manage virtual computing resources and cloud-based systems.

While 60% of CA's $4.2 billion business is related to the mainframe, the company is making cloud computing one of its main focuses, along with security, software-as-a-service-based IT management and virtualisation management, says Tom Kendra, vice president of enterprise products and solutions.

Managing the new virtualisation layer and cloud-based services is no easy task, in part because the technologies have been installed in addition to -- rather than replacements of -- existing IT infrastructure, and require a heterogeneous management approach, Kendra says..

CA's cloud strategy centers around a new "Cloud-Connected Management Suite" that includes four products. Those include Cloud Insight, for assessing how internal and external IT services relate to business priorities; Cloud Compose, for creating, deploying and managing composite services in a cloud; Cloud Optimise, which optimise use of both internal and external IT resources for cost and performance; and Cloud Orchestrate, which "will provide workflow control and policy-based automation of changes to service infrastructures."

CA also announced three virtualisation products, which are Virtual Assurance, for monitoring, event correlation and fault and performance management in virtual environments; Virtual Automation, which provides automated self-service virtual machine life-cycle management; and Virtual Configuration, which manages sprawl, and tracks configuration changes to meet regulatory compliance and audit needs.

The products will start hitting the market in June, but CA did not offer more specific availability or pricing information.

Follow Jon Brodkin on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jbrodkin

Read more about data center in Network World's Data Center section.

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