CA Community






This Blog
Syndication
Blogroll

December 2010 - Posts

Go Beyond Job Scheduling: Application Workload Automation

Published: December 20 2010, 01:37 PM | no comments
by Mike Odusami

Jim Anderson, vice president of product management for Workload Automation at CA Technologies, recently delivered the 3rd in the ‘Go Beyond Job Scheduling' webcast series. This was a particularly exciting event given the focus of discussion which was Application Workload Automation. As with previous webcasts in the series, the depth of understanding and thought leadership demonstrated by CA Technologies on this topic was impressive. It's welcoming to see, given that some vendors now refer to a bunch of servers grouped together as a ‘workload'!

Jim started the session by defining application workload automation and how it differs from legacy, calendar-driven job scheduling tools, which still run 70% of business workloads today, according to a customer poll.  Conversely, 30% of workloads are embedded in packaged and home-grown applications, with little regards to other workloads and the broader IT operations environment.

CA Technologies is introducing a new enterprise workload automation paradigm that is business-event driven and which merges legacy workloads with more dynamic application workload environments. In this new world, the workload engine becomes a service governor, marshalling workloads between legacy batch and real-time applications, managing resources, dependencies, and priorities to ensure business SLAs are met.  

In essence, the webcast captured how much CA Technologies has evolved workload automation to support cloud requirements such as dynamic workload placement and a diverse set of workload types, including ERPs such as SAP.

Wrapping up the session, which was peppered with practical use cases and scenarios, was a comprehensive discussion on how CA Workload Automation fits into the broader CA Service Automation portfolio, including CA Process Automation (or RBA) and CA Server Automation.  

If you missed the original webcast, you can catch a replay at https://www.ca.com/us/register/activity.aspx?cid=107705. And while you're at it, register for the entire webcast series here - including a replay of previous events and the 4th in the ‘Go Beyond Job Scheduling' series, which is scheduled for January 12, 2011. You never know, you might even win the drawing for a free iPad in the process - pun intended!

Share this post:  
Tags: , , , , ,
Leave a comment

 

By: Mike Odusami
Mike is a senior product marketing manager and cloud automation evangelist at CA Technologies. Prior to this role, he was a market strategist for the CA Service Automation and CA Service Management solutions, providing strategic and tactical market analysis to help formulate product and marketing directions...
Read More..

Issue 2 of CA Technology Exchange is Focused on Virtualization

Published: December 20 2010, 11:13 AM | no comments
by David Resnic

The theme of the first issue of CA Technology Exchange (CATX) was cloud computing. The theme of the second issue is closely related: Virtualization.

CATX, sponsored by the CA Council for Technical Excellence, presents innovative ideas and solutions from CA Technologies and focuses on enterprise IT management from a technical perspective, promoting our ideas rather than our products.

This new issue of CATX features articles on virtualization project success, virtual self-service, virtualized data, as well as columns from CA Technologies thought leaders.

As Marv Waschke, Editor in Chief, CA Technology Exchange notes in his Welcome letter, two of the three articles in this issue discuss virtual systems in practice. He writes:

Although virtualization can deliver great rewards, deploying an IT service or group of services to run virtually is a complicated project that requires planning and systematic execution. Anders Magnusson from CA Services is an experienced implementer of virtualization projects. His article provides an insider's view of the challenges in justifying, planning, and executing virtualization projects.

Efraim Moscovich is an architect of virtualization management tools. He has taken time to consider the potential of virtual systems for self-service in IT.

Finally Sudhakar Anivella, a senior architect in service management development, discusses another dimension to virtualization. We tend to think of virtualization as synonymous with virtual servers, but in fact, we use the concept of virtualization in many ways in computing: virtual memory, virtual routing, are all common. Data virtualization, as Sudhakar points out, has become very important in IT systems.

Marv describes the columns this way:

In addition to full-length articles, we have columns from CA Labs senior executive, Gabby Silberman, and ITIL expert, Brian Johnson. Virtualization has long been a staple of mainframe computing. Ideas that are new to distributed computing have been used for a long time on the mainframe. Recently retired CA Technical Fellow Emeritus, John Kane, has written a column that touches on some of the ways that virtual distributed computing is recapping the experience of the mainframe.

Marv also explains the peer review process:

All articles in CATX are reviewed by panels of experts from CA Technologies. Articles that pass the internal review go on to external review panels made up of individuals from universities, industry experts, and experts among CA Technologies customers. These reviewers remain anonymous to preserve the integrity of the review process, but the editorial committee would like to thank them for their efforts. They are valued contributors to the success of CATX and we are grateful to them. If any readers would like to participate in a review panel, please let us know of your interest and expertise in an email to CATX@ca.com.

Share this post:  
Tags: , , ,
Leave a comment

 

By: David Resnic
David is senior principal of communications at CA, working with the Virtualization and Service Automation teams. He has more than 18 years of B2B and B2C public relations experience, working with dozens of companies such as Arsenal Digital Solutions, E Ink, Hasbro, MobileAccess, and Spalding Sports Worldwide...
Read More..

Cloud Computing Survey Points to Arrival of “Cloud Thinking” - Virtualization Maturity is Contributing Factor

Published: December 16 2010, 03:58 PM | no comments
by David Resnic

Cloud computing is coming of age in large enterprises, according to a new study of North American and European IT professionals conducted by Management Insight on behalf of CA Technologies. The group surveyed IT professionals in organizations with 1,000 to 10,000-plus employees, revealing that enterprises are active in the cloud, and their virtualization efforts are contributing to broader interest in cloud computing. The results also indicate a shift toward approaching IT using "cloud thinking," accelerating the uses of cloud computing and helping to align IT decision makers and implementers around common goals of efficiency, flexibility and scalability.

The press release we issued today on the results of the survey highlights that virtualization maturity is contributing to cloud thinking. The claim is supported by the following:

On average, roughly one-third of x86 servers are virtualized within the enterprise today.  Nearly half of these companies (46 percent) indicate a "managed" stage of virtualization, with the ability to move virtual machines and manage them for high availability.  As enterprises move along the virtualization maturity lifecycle from basic (unmanaged virtual servers), to managed, to advanced (dynamic resource scheduling and consolidated back-up), and on to "cloud-like" (advanced virtual automation, full disaster recovery via virtualization), the applications they earmark for the cloud also begin to shift. 

Email leads in the managed stage (53 percent); desktop virtualization and databases peak during the advanced stage (30 percent); and industry-specific applications top all others in the cloud-like stage (32 percent). 

In addition, respondents indicate plans to continue to move mission-critical applications from non-virtualized infrastructure to virtual machines over the next couple of years.  Enterprises are running nearly half (47 percent) of these applications on non-virtualized infrastructure today, which will drop by 17 percent in the next two years.  Of that 17 percent, 10 percent will shift to public and private clouds.

As IT reorganizes itself for more dynamic virtualized environments, the tendency to embrace the cloud rises.  Virtualization-intensive organizations are roughly four times more likely to move as many services as possible into both public and private clouds. Overall, the perceptions of cloud computing take on a more optimistic tone as organizations advance their technical infrastructure to support more dynamic environments.

To learn more about the survey results, as well as access a paper that Management Insight wrote about the findings and a slide show featuring the results graphically, visit http://pitch.pe/110173.

Share this post:  
Tags: ,
Leave a comment

 

By: David Resnic
David is senior principal of communications at CA, working with the Virtualization and Service Automation teams. He has more than 18 years of B2B and B2C public relations experience, working with dozens of companies such as Arsenal Digital Solutions, E Ink, Hasbro, MobileAccess, and Spalding Sports Worldwide...
Read More..

Virtualization Adoption: The Secrets of a Successful Journey: A Case Study of Tessera Technologies

Published: December 15 2010, 09:00 AM | no comments
by David Resnic

This presentation, delivered December 6 at the Gartner Data Center Conference, provides an overview of the virtualization and cloud adoption lifecycle, explains what virtual stall is and how to breakthrough its roadblocks, and provides a case study about Tessera Technologies.

Virtualization Adoption: The Secrets of a Successful Journey: A Case Study of Tessera Technologies
View more presentations from David Resnic.
Share this post:  
Tags: , , ,
Leave a comment

 

By: David Resnic
David is senior principal of communications at CA, working with the Virtualization and Service Automation teams. He has more than 18 years of B2B and B2C public relations experience, working with dozens of companies such as Arsenal Digital Solutions, E Ink, Hasbro, MobileAccess, and Spalding Sports Worldwide...
Read More..

CA Technologies Top Technology Predictions for 2011

Published: December 14 2010, 08:34 AM | no comments
by David Resnic

Today security is still viewed as the biggest barrier to cloud adoption. Organizations struggle with the confidence that they or their cloud provider can adequately secure their data and use of the cloud. However, this perception is likely to change this year as stronger, more advanced security options are deployed as cloud services from organizations that specialize in security. CA Technologies yesterday released its technology predictions for 2011, many of which forecast that the upcoming year will be when companies of all sizes realize the promise of the cloud:

  • Clouds will reign
  • Consumerization of IT ... "To the Cloud"
  • Identity and Access Management as a cloud service will shift Security perception from cloud barrier to cloud enabler
  • Mainframe Becomes Part of Cloud Strategies
  • Smart Devices Will Displace Laptops
  • Automation is the Secret Weapon
  • Insider security threats surge

Read our press release for the specifics about each prediction: CA Technologies Top Technology Predictions for 2011 and let us know if you agree or disagree with our forecast.

Share this post:  
Tags: , , , , , ,
Leave a comment

 

By: David Resnic
David is senior principal of communications at CA, working with the Virtualization and Service Automation teams. He has more than 18 years of B2B and B2C public relations experience, working with dozens of companies such as Arsenal Digital Solutions, E Ink, Hasbro, MobileAccess, and Spalding Sports Worldwide...
Read More..

More Posts Next page »