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CA Event To Highlight On-demand Computing
By Denise Dubie, Network World -- At its annual customer conference next week in Las Vegas, Computer Associates will flesh out its strategy for managing on-demand computing environments - a software-centric effort the company says is more flexible than the hardware-driven plans of rivals HP and IBM. 
Industry watchers say CA will address key requirements such as virtualization, provisioning and configuration management. On-demand, or utility, computing refers to the idea of pooling system resources and dynamically allocating them to meet shifting demands instead of the traditional practice of assigning resources to applications. The latter has resulted in computing environments that often are 75% underutilized, when the ideal would be systems that are engaged actively 80% of the time. CA won't reveal what it plans to announce at CA World 2003, where it anticipates 10,000 attendees. But last week it did announce a few additions and upgrades to its Unicenter management line that it positioned as part of its on-demand scheme, first unveiled in April at NetWorld+Interop. These offerings, which include a tool for overseeing wireless LANs and an upgraded mainframe manager, fit the on-demand computing profile in that they will help customers get a better view of their IT resources so as to better make use of them, CA officials say. For instance, Unicenter NSM Wireless Network Management Option 3.0 provides an integrated console for tracking wireless and wired networks. "[We] are trying little by little to make CA and Unicenter the management specialist in enterprise networks," says Gale Persil, director of Unicenter network management at CA. "The more intelligence we add to our software, the more adaptive equipment makers make their gear, the more we can address this bit by bit. And I say bit by bit because you get throttled back by customers that are a little bit afraid of the software taking over their machines." CA officials emphasize that the company's on-demand computing strategy is not tied to any particular brand of hardware and will not require customers to overhaul their systems or networks. "CA is taking into account the diversity across enterprise infrastructures," says Jean-Pierre Garbani, a director with Forrester Research. "The company is not telling customers to standardize on any one type of equipment, but it will manage heterogeneous resources with software." Analysts say CA is competing against companies such as BMC Software to get the early lead in managing on-demand computing environments, which most companies are still in the very early stages of building. CA's product plans prove the company is committed to a software-only approach to on-demand computing, says Jasmine Noel, principal at research firm JNoel Associates. She says CA, and competitor BMC, this year announced advancements in their management software that could enable on-demand computing. "The race is on to try to tie software-distribution tools with performance-management tools so that customers can more directly manage IT as business demands it on the fly," Noel says. BMC earlier this year announced its plans to manage business services after it acquired IT Masters, which developed technology that BMC now uses to help customers create models of business services. CA has yet to develop or acquire the modeling technology to rival BMC's, Noel says, but the company is providing more automation in Unicenter and using its business-process views to help customers start aligning IT closer with services. Makers of hardware and software such as IBM and HP, meanwhile, focus on the idea of virtualizing all the resources across a network and making several machines act as one super-machine. Despite coming at on-demand computing from a different perspective, CA still will find itself battling these companies and that will prove challenging, analysts say. "It's one thing to compete with OpenView or Tivoli. It's a completely different thing to compete with HP and IBM," Noel says. While CA is making incremental advances by adding automation and service views across its management software products, the company isn't quite up to speed on all the technology it will need to provide customers with on-demand computing management capabilities. One area it will need to address is virtualization, analysts say. Industry experts say virtualization technologies in both server pools and storage networks are pivotal to deploying an on-demand computing network. Software from companies such as Connectix, SW-Soft and VMware lets Intel servers emulate the software-partitioning and virtual-machine capabilities of bigger Unix servers from HP, IBM and Sun, and mainframes from IBM. It's companies such as these that have gotten customers' attention early on regarding on-demand computing. "We are not looking at CA right now for any of these functions," says Chris Holbert, director of IT at North American Scientific in Chatsworth, Calif., and a user of Unicenter for monitoring network devices and remote offices. "We are looking at virtualization and on-demand computing, but [from] different vendors . . . mainly VMware." IBM says it will come out with WebSphere software that will let companies manage business applications running on different servers as a single environment. And HP unveiled in May details of its HP Virtual Server Environment, software that the company says allocates virtual resources in response to application demand and was built on the latest version of HP-UX Workload Manager. "CA is a bit behind HP and IBM in terms of virtualization, and they are only scratching the surface of virtualization," says Corey Ferengul, a vice president with Meta Group.
Industry watchers say CA will address key requirements such as virtualization, provisioning and configuration management. On-demand, or utility, computing refers to the idea of pooling system resources and dynamically allocating them to meet shifting demands instead of the traditional practice of assigning resources to applications. The latter has resulted in computing environments that often are 75% underutilized, when the ideal would be systems that are engaged actively 80% of the time. CA won't reveal what it plans to announce at CA World 2003, where it anticipates 10,000 attendees. But last week it did announce a few additions and upgrades to its Unicenter management line that it positioned as part of its on-demand scheme, first unveiled in April at NetWorld+Interop. These offerings, which include a tool for overseeing wireless LANs and an upgraded mainframe manager, fit the on-demand computing profile in that they will help customers get a better view of their IT resources so as to better make use of them, CA officials say. For instance, Unicenter NSM Wireless Network Management Option 3.0 provides an integrated console for tracking wireless and wired networks. "[We] are trying little by little to make CA and Unicenter the management specialist in enterprise networks," says Gale Persil, director of Unicenter network management at CA. "The more intelligence we add to our software, the more adaptive equipment makers make their gear, the more we can address this bit by bit. And I say bit by bit because you get throttled back by customers that are a little bit afraid of the software taking over their machines." CA officials emphasize that the company's on-demand computing strategy is not tied to any particular brand of hardware and will not require customers to overhaul their systems or networks. "CA is taking into account the diversity across enterprise infrastructures," says Jean-Pierre Garbani, a director with Forrester Research. "The company is not telling customers to standardize on any one type of equipment, but it will manage heterogeneous resources with software." Analysts say CA is competing against companies such as BMC Software to get the early lead in managing on-demand computing environments, which most companies are still in the very early stages of building. CA's product plans prove the company is committed to a software-only approach to on-demand computing, says Jasmine Noel, principal at research firm JNoel Associates. She says CA, and competitor BMC, this year announced advancements in their management software that could enable on-demand computing. "The race is on to try to tie software-distribution tools with performance-management tools so that customers can more directly manage IT as business demands it on the fly," Noel says. BMC earlier this year announced its plans to manage business services after it acquired IT Masters, which developed technology that BMC now uses to help customers create models of business services. CA has yet to develop or acquire the modeling technology to rival BMC's, Noel says, but the company is providing more automation in Unicenter and using its business-process views to help customers start aligning IT closer with services. Makers of hardware and software such as IBM and HP, meanwhile, focus on the idea of virtualizing all the resources across a network and making several machines act as one super-machine. Despite coming at on-demand computing from a different perspective, CA still will find itself battling these companies and that will prove challenging, analysts say. "It's one thing to compete with OpenView or Tivoli. It's a completely different thing to compete with HP and IBM," Noel says. While CA is making incremental advances by adding automation and service views across its management software products, the company isn't quite up to speed on all the technology it will need to provide customers with on-demand computing management capabilities. One area it will need to address is virtualization, analysts say. Industry experts say virtualization technologies in both server pools and storage networks are pivotal to deploying an on-demand computing network. Software from companies such as Connectix, SW-Soft and VMware lets Intel servers emulate the software-partitioning and virtual-machine capabilities of bigger Unix servers from HP, IBM and Sun, and mainframes from IBM. It's companies such as these that have gotten customers' attention early on regarding on-demand computing. "We are not looking at CA right now for any of these functions," says Chris Holbert, director of IT at North American Scientific in Chatsworth, Calif., and a user of Unicenter for monitoring network devices and remote offices. "We are looking at virtualization and on-demand computing, but [from] different vendors . . . mainly VMware." IBM says it will come out with WebSphere software that will let companies manage business applications running on different servers as a single environment. And HP unveiled in May details of its HP Virtual Server Environment, software that the company says allocates virtual resources in response to application demand and was built on the latest version of HP-UX Workload Manager. "CA is a bit behind HP and IBM in terms of virtualization, and they are only scratching the surface of virtualization," says Corey Ferengul, a vice president with Meta Group. 
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