CA Technologies extends reach of Automation Suite
IT management-software company CA Technologies extended its CA Automation Suite on Monday, releasing two new products for configuration and process automation of a company's IT infrastructure.
CA Configuration Automation is a tool that maps and describes the IT equipment in a business, how all that gear is related, and what external services the systems talk to. CA Process Automation defines the processes for bringing in new IT equipment, primarily servers, into a company's IT infrastructure. However, it does not extend down to the level of individual server configuration.
"Server automation is extremely siloed in nature, but both the configuration and process automation will be used by more senior level architects who need to look holistically across a portion of the IT infrastructure," Ryan Shopp, CA Technologies' automation product manager, told ZDNet UK on Tuesday.
The two products were previously bundled within a number of CA's software packages, such as CA Spectrum Automation Manager. Now CA is offering them separately, Shopp said, as the company had seen great demand for dedicated, standalone versions of the products.
"CA has started to put in place one of the most complete offerings in the market — and could pick up considerable share against those who believe that cloud can be managed by existing systems management tools," Clive Longbottom, founder of analysis company Quocirca told ZDNet UK on Tuesday.
If CA successfully manages to integrate technologies from recent acquisitions such as Nimsoft, then it should "be taken seriously" he said.
[Update: This article has been changed to reflect new information by CA Technologies.]