CA airs on-demand computing plan

LAS VEGAS - Now that HP, IBM, Microsoft and other system infrastructure companies have laid out their visions for utility computing, Computer Associates officials said Tuesday that the time is right for CA to jump in and offer a way to manage environments heading in this direction.

CA Chairman and CEO Sanjay Kumar used his NetWorld+Interop 2003 keynote address to introduce the company's on-demand computing strategy, which centers around helping companies migrate toward utility computing without overhauling their systems and networks. On-demand, or utility computing, refers to the idea of pooling system resources and then using that capacity as needed by better aligning it with business processes and applications.

"It's not about switching out servers; it's not about the latest generation of hardware; it's about using what you have more effectively and efficiently," he said.

"Companies today are managing to peak demand," said Kumar, who suggested that organizations today often use only 10% to 20% of their server capacity but feel they need to have lots of it on hand just in case.

CA, which says it has been working with customers for more than a year to define their on-demand computing needs, introduced a series of product upgrades to support its strategy in this area. The company says it is taking an evolutionary approach, which helps to explain why the announcement consisted of a batch of product upgrades rather than a slew of brand-new products. Details on the upgraded products were spare, though CA promised more information soon.

New offerings include Unicenter Network and Systems Management 3.1, which now enables organizations to better track IT infrastructure as it relates to services and applications supported. In other words, if a pool of server resources is used to handle a high-demand application at a certain time of day, IT staffers could see how much capacity is left to divvy up among other applications and services. A new Unicenter NSM Dynamic Reconfiguration Option can be used to oversee business service levels, anticipating when more capacity might be needed for certain applications.

CA also aired new versions of its software distribution, asset management, help desk and WebMethods application server management tools, all of which CA says play a role in supporting its vision for a more self-managing computing environment. New or upgraded security and storage management products that support on-demand computing will be rolled out down the road, Kumar said.

The new products are mainly designed to support internal utility computing environments, whereas Kumar said he sees more elaborate grid computing systems spanning organizations to come into vogue later on.

Several CA customers were on hand to show their support.

Cynthia Luman, vice president of computer operations for CSX Technology, the Jacksonville, Fla.-based IT arm of railroad giant CSX, says she looks forward to a more automated computing environment in which problems can be resolved faster and service levels can be managed better.