CA's Cloud Push Births New Wares For Service Providers, Enterprise

CA Technologies' recent cloud assault has given way to a host of new products aimed at service providers and enterprise cloud users, many taking pieces from the multiple cloud-focused acquisitions CA has made in the past two years.

CA's massive cloud push was kicked into high gear Wednesday with the launch of 10 new and enhanced cloud-specific products, and a new partner program for service providers to get them fully immersed in the cloud game.

The CA Cloud Market Accelerator Program for Service Providers gives CA service provider partners new tools and resources for co-marketing, sales enablement and collaboration, and is designed to support providers throughout the cloud computing lifecycle, said Jay Fry, CA's vice president of cloud computing marketing. The program offers partners sales tools, materials and training; co-brandable marketing materials and demand generation campaign management resources; go-to-market planning tools and training; and access to the Cloud Commons Knowledge Hub.

The Cloud Market Accelerator Program is around the new service provider cloud plays CA put into market, offerings that help providers and enterprises "get a handle on the myriad choices of cloud computing" whether it is public, private or hybrid cloud, Fry said. The additions to CA's cloud roster aim to hit all aspects of the cloud computing lifecycle, including planning, designing, delivering, securing and assuring.

The four new products central to CA's service provider offerings are designed to help providers launch new, high-margin cloud services and tailor those offerings to all sizes of customers.

First is the latest version of CA AppLogic 3.0, the turnkey cloud platform CA brought aboard in its acquisition of 3Tera in February 2010. The platform lets providers deliver infrastructure, tools, applications and virtual data centers in the cloud, Fry said, enabling them to quickly add new revenue-driving cloud services that are hypervisor agnostic. The latest version of AppLogic supports VMware ESX and XEN to give service providers access to more customers and architectures, and to enable their customers to leverage and protect their existing VMware investments. Other new features include a Global Fabric Controller to add detection and inventory functions; Open Virtualization Format, which lets providers import workflows from VMware or Xen; Role-base Access Controls so users and groups can have better secure systems; and international language support.

CA also released a new set of automation, assurance and service management products for service providers, which can also be leveraged by enterprises, Fry said. The CA Automation Suite for Clouds 1.0 helps service providers automate the service delivery process; CA NetQoS Unified Communications Monitor 3.2 lets providers offer voice and video management services; and CA Business Service Insight 8.0, which comes from CA's Oblicore acquisition, helps providers manage and report on their service level commitments.

Next: CA's Enterprise Cloud Push Adds New Products

On the enterprise side, Islandia, N.Y.-based CA also added the CA Business Service Insight 8.0 that helps manage service performance of cloud and traditional services. Ryan Shopp, CA senior director of virtualization product marketing, said Business Service Insight helps companies determine if it's right to move certain applications to the cloud and how.

CA Virtual Placement Manager 1.0 aids in the cloud design phase, Shopp said. Based on CA's Hyperformix acquisition, Virtual Placement Manager helps enterprise design and optimize virtual infrastructure by analyzing the number of virtual machines and workloads to right-size the virtualized environment.

Meanwhile, CA Automation Suite for Clouds 1.0 offers enterprises a pre-integrated solution to deliver private cloud services as a framework for customers and partners to quickly implement and accelerate time to value. The suite includes pre-designed workflows for automated, self-service delivery of virtual and physical infrastructure and application services. The Suite comprises CA Automation Suite for Clouds is comprised of CA Server Automation, CA Virtual Automation, CA Process Automation, CA Configuration Automation and CA Service Catalog.

CA Automation Suite for Data Centers 12.5 lets enterprises move workloads from private to public clouds as need. It also helps prevent vendor lock-in by letting users move applications and workloads into and out of various clouds like Amazon Web Services, Rackspace and Terremark. CA Automation Suite for Data Centers 12.5 comprises new releases of CA Server Automation, CA Virtual Automation, CA Configuration Automation and CA Process Automation.

And for the enterprise CA AppLogic 3.0 offers a turnkey cloud platform for enterprises to design and deliver virtual business services across private and public clouds.

Additional enterprise-focused cloud product updates include CA Virtual Assurance for Infrastructure Managers 12.5 to assure application performance across virtual, cloud and traditional IT environments; CA Identity Manager 12.5 and CA Role & Compliance Manager 12.5 to secure and control identity and access across virtual, cloud and traditional IT environments; CA Data Manager 4.3 for designing data center efficiency; and CA Automation Suite for Cisco UCS 12.5 for delivering dynamic service and application automation across physical, virtual and cloud infrastructures.

According to Shopp, all of CA's new cloud and virtualization plays will hit the CA channel and new programs are being built to help partners get their clients to the cloud.

"We're actively pursuing a number of relationships with providers to offer this as a key part of their cloud solution," he said.