The EMA All-Stars in Enterprise Systems Management for 2008

The EMAT All-StarsT in
Enterprise Systems Management for 2008
IntroductionIn this EMAT Research Report, Enterprise Management Associates highlights what it considers to be the best available software solutions in 18 specific enterprise systems management disciplines, in order to form a 'Systems Management All-Star' team. Three categories of solutions were identified in each discipline: All-Star First Team (a special honor for the 'best of the best'), All-Stars (the best performers in systems management) and Rising Stars (the best new or innovative vendors with the potential to be on a future All-Star Team). Each solution earned its selection for the EMA All-Stars Team based on a mix of objec-tive and subjective criteria, including:. S trength of Offering - depth and breadth of product functionality was a key factor. Solutions with limited functionality or applicability in narrow niches were not considered for the list. Significant factors in this category included diversity of platform and technology support, as well as integration with third-party systems.. Innovation - the number of new releases in 2007 was a major, objective indicator of innovation. New product functionality also was considered important. While limited innovation was not a complete barrier in determining the best vendors - particularly in mature disciplines - vision and a demonstrated commitment to product development were highly weighted.. Customer Feedback - analyst interactions with enterprises (including surveys, focal interviews, case studies and input from EMA Enterprise IT Consulting clients) provided many objective measures including market penetration and customer satisfaction. Also, specific feedback from companies using a vendor's technology played a significant part in the evaluation.. The EMA Perspective - a consensus of opinion about each solution among EMA analysts also played a key role in the selection of team members. The EMA analysts' evaluation was based on many years of enterprise, vendor and analyst experience in systems management coupled with access to a wealth of data in the EMA research library and the EMA IT Management Solutions Center (http://itsolutions.emausa.com).
The EMA All-Stars Team showcases our choice for the very best players in the enterprise systems management arena. The report profiles the top solutions on several useful mea-sures to provide strong, independent guidance for enterprises and vendors alike.
All-Star in Event Management/Console Consolidation: CACA-Unicenter Automation Point has a distinct advantage over many alternatives, with its proven maturity in even the most heterogeneous of environments. Natively, it provides policy-based outboard automation, console consolidation, and event correlation, as well as automatic problem resolution. Unlike HP and Microsoft, it also has strong mainframe integration through CA's own OPS/MVS product line, which natively supports z/OS and mainframe UNIX, with built-in control of mission-critical mainframe environments like
TEMA RESEARCH | Page  ©2008 Enterprise Management Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved.IMS and CICS. It also integrates with CA's own Service Desk for central management of problem issues and events, as well as other products in CA's Enterprise IT Management (EITM) solutions. EMA research also shows that CA has a higher than average satisfaction rating - at well over 4 out of 5, it is second only to Microsoft in the statistically significant ratings. Unfortunately, there is only a limited amount of space in the First Team, and with only the 4th-highest penetration, CA will have to be content with selection to the regular team in this year's Event Management/Console Consolidation All-Stars.
All-Star First-Team in Virtual System Management: CACA takes the lone First Team position for Virtual Systems Management for a single, simple, but extraordinarily important and all-too-often overlooked reason - heteroge-neous system support. CA Unicenter ASM supports heterogeneous virtualization envi-ronments with a platform-neutral approach that manages several different virtualization technologies (including server and operating system virtualization and grid/cluster sys-tems), from many vendors (including VMware, Microsoft, Red Hat, IBM, Sun, Symantec and HP), and across many platforms (including Windows, UNIX, and Linux). CA also has a very promising strategy for integrating virtual a... [download for more]