SLANDIA, N.Y., Jan. 10, 2011, -- CA Technologies (Nasdaq: CA) today announced the general availability of three key products in the CA Automation Suite, launched in October. CA Configuration Automation r12, CA Process Automation r3, and CA Server Automation r12 are designed to help customers expedite their journey to a virtualized, dynamic cloud computing infrastructure and increase business agility, reduce cost and risk, and improve service delivery.

"The CA Automation Suite is arguably the single most cohesive package of automation offerings on the market today," said Dennis Drogseth, vice president of research, Enterprise Management Associates. "CA Technologies has shown extraordinary vision in creating a unique portfolio that should effectively address the requirements of both its more progressive customers, as well as customers seeking a more intelligible approach to getting started with automation."

CA Configuration Automation r12 is a new Business Service Automation product designed to enable greater standardization of IT services, reduced downtime, and increased compliance with regulatory and IT security policies. CA Configuration Automation provides application and system discovery and dependency mapping, as well as configuration monitoring and remediation, across a range of applications and distributed physical and virtual servers. Key features include granular configuration tracking and auditing; more than 1000 out-of-the-box application, service, compliance and system templates and policies; and the flexibility of using either agent or agent-less approaches.

CA Process Automation r3 is a new Business Service Automation product that helps reduce operational expenses, increase staff productivity and increase speed in delivering IT services by documenting, automating, and orchestrating a range of processes across platforms, applications, and IT groups. Key features include a graphical designer interface, visual exception handling, and over 50 CA Technologies and third-party pre-built data connectors and Quickstarts, including ones for Amazon Web Services, and VMware vSphere. These features provide a context of the tasks being automated to architects and help deliver quicker results.

CA Server Automation r12 is an Infrastructure Automation product that dynamically provisions, patches, and deploys applications and services across physical and virtual systems based on standard templates and key performance metrics. New capabilities include support for new hypervisors, including Microsoft Hyper-V and support for Cisco UCS.

CA Client Automation r12.5 and CA Virtual Automation r3 were made generally available in May 2010 and July 2010, respectively. CA Workload Automation r11.3 is planned to be generally available by spring 2011.

All products in the CA Automation Suite may be purchased and implemented separately or in three pre-integrated solutions designed for critical use-case requirements: hybrid clouds, Cisco UCS, and data centers.

CA Automation Suite for Hybrid Clouds is designed for enterprises interested in building an internal private cloud, or planning to leverage a public cloud as a part of their data center strategy. CA Automation Suite for Hybrid Clouds helps standardize IT service delivery to business customers through a unified, self-service reservation system and seamless administration. The integrated solution includes CA Process Automation, CA Server Automation, CA Virtual Automation, and CA Service Catalog and Accounting.

CA Automation Suite for Cisco UCS is designed for enterprises scaling out a Cisco UCS solution in their data centers that needs heterogeneous configuration and provisioning support, and industrial-grade scalability. The integrated solution, with jointly developed content from CA Technologies and Cisco, includes CA Configuration Automation, CA Process Automation, CA Server Automation, and CA Virtual Automation.  With CA Virtual Automation, images can be moved to Cisco UCS from non-Cisco UCS servers.

CA Automation Suite for Data Centers is designed for enterprises looking to maximize the benefits of managing integrated physical and virtual infrastructures, while preparing to take advantage of cloud computing's benefits. This integrated solution is comprised of CA Configuration Automation, CA Process Automation, CA Server Automation, and CA Virtual Automation.

"Automation, orchestration and virtualization management are top priorities for enterprise and larger mid-market customers," states Mary Johnston Turner, IDC Research Director for Enterprise System Management Software. "These technologies are critical enablers of private cloud environments. According to a recent IDC survey* of large North American companies, those that are committed to deploying a private cloud environment are almost three times as likely to be planning for widespread production use of automation, orchestration and virtualization management tools when compared to organizations that have not yet defined a private cloud strategy. These companies expect use of these tools to significantly improve IT staff productivity and increase utilization of in-house system resources."

"The CA Automation Suite has been well received by customers looking for a comprehensive solution to help rapidly deliver services in response to changing business needs," said Roger Pilc, general manager, Virtualization and Automation, CA Technologies. "Designed with unified physical and virtualization management in mind, the Suite provides a clear path toward helping enterprises accelerate the benefits of virtualization and cloud computing."

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Source: CA Technologies