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Bloor Research has carried out an evaluation looking at four leading companies (CA, EMC, HP and IBM) in terms of their strategies and technologies for addressing network (fault and performance) management and voice management for major enterprises (dated February 2008). The report compared and contrasted their relative strengths and approaches. This paper is a summary focusing on CA’s approach and its Network and Voice Management (NVM) solution.
Bloor cannot overstate the importance of an integrated toolset for seamlessly managing and supporting the whole enterprise network and voice infrastructure. Problems occur, so the best tools need to: a) very rapidly pinpoint and correct existing faults and degraded performance, b) prevent problems occurring in the first place where possible, and c) handle network changes easily and automatically to minimize risks to live operation. To reduce management complexity, the ideal software set will also be easy to implement, update and use. These are the factors that provided the basis for Bloor’s software evaluation criteria.
The network management landscape
Enterprise networks are evolving rapidly. Once they had only to accommodate data transmission with a completely separate system for telephony. Then came integration with the internet and the rise of virtual private networks (VPNs) that exist conceptually above the physical infrastructure, followed by web services and all manner of transmissions using internet protocol (IP) format including, more recently, Voice over IP (VoIP).
Enterprises are demanding ever-improving service quality and performance while costs are held down. Senior business executives are increasingly aware of the advantages and opportunities that can flow from closer integration of this range of technologies. Yet, while integration is fine in theory, the hapless IT department can discover that implementing new technologies while maintaining live 24/7 operation of an already complex infrastructure is a nightmare.
At least 60% of all network problems can be directly traced to implementing changes (some analysts estimate this as high as 80%), yet the frequency of changes is increasing. Now factor in an exponentially rising amount of data to move around, increasing network speeds to meet contracted service level agreement (SLA) requirements, enterprise infrastructures expected to become more complex and dynamic, and the support needed for both data and voice and a mix of many vendors’ hardware and software. Superior, advanced and flexible enterprise network management software is fundamental to addressing these infrastructure needs going forward.
CA strategy
CA has had a management overhaul and is now emerging from its re-branding exercise under the leadership of CEO John Swainson. It has a long-standing reputation for offering a broad portfolio of IT management solutions but there is now much more focus on improving depth and integration.
CA is also working hard to ensure that the quality of its marketing communications matches the undoubted technical quality of its products. The introduction of its Enterprise IT Management (EITM) strategy has brought a clearer direction for its product line and a clearer value proposition to customers. EITM is CA’s vision of how companies can unify and simplify IT management for greater business results. Through EITM, the enterprise can govern, manage and secure IT in an integrated way across the entire IT operation. CA delivers a set of capability solutions based on a consistent set of business practices and standards to ensure high interoperability levels as the EITM building blocks.
One key development supporting this strategy is the CA Integration Platform (possibly to be released in early 2008). It will provide a lightweight, federated, massively scalable, policy driven integration capability with no single point of failure. The architecture should provide the infrastructure that large scale Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) will demand. CA will roll out all its key products with plug-in support for the platform—and vendors of complementary or competitive products will be invited to do the same. Being heterogeneous and vendor-neutral, it should protect customers’ investments and provide the basis for easy integration, unification, simplification and extension. At the time of writing Bloor Research believes that the CA Integration Platform is unique.
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