CA World 2010: CA unveils cloud management tools

Cloud computing

CA Technologies has launched a suite of products designed to help businesses better manage the use of the cloud within their organisations.

Dubbed the CA Cloud-Connected Management Suite, the offering will result in four products focused on specific areas where the company believes firms need a helping hand.

The first two products, CA Cloud Insight and CA Cloud Compose will be available by the end of October. They are designed to help companies assess services against business priorities - and will leverage the just-launched Clouds Commons website - and will also help companies create and manage cloud-like services from commodity hardware.

The other two products - Cloud Optimise and Cloud Orchestrate - will be available come April and the following quarter respectively. They will enable businesses to get the most out of cloud services as well as aiding policies and workflow control, according to CA.

"Historically, IT relied almost exclusively on internal resources and infrastructure to meet the needs of the enterprise," said Chris O'Malley, executive vice president of the company's cloud products and solutions business line, during his keynote speech at CA World 2010.

"As companies embrace cloud computing, however, they increasingly partner with whichever external providers can best help them meet their changing requirements. This means an organisation's ability to gain competitive advantages from technology will be contingent upon their ability to continuously optimise their IT supply chains."

The cloud has been a recurring theme during CA's user conference this week in Las Vegas. Earlier during the event, the company unveiled a cloud-focused ratings site for business users to help make better informed decisions about which services are best for their needs.

During a Q&A session with press following his keynote, O'Malley added: "We believe IT is fundamentally changing as a result of the cloud... We see this as a huge enabler for large organisations."

Maggie Holland

Maggie has been a journalist since 1999, starting her career as an editorial assistant on then-weekly magazine Computing, before working her way up to senior reporter level. In 2006, just weeks before ITPro was launched, Maggie joined Dennis Publishing as a reporter. Having worked her way up to editor of ITPro, she was appointed group editor of CloudPro and ITPro in April 2012. She became the editorial director and took responsibility for ChannelPro, in 2016.

Her areas of particular interest, aside from cloud, include management and C-level issues, the business value of technology, green and environmental issues and careers to name but a few.