CA’s CEO calls management the ‘killer app’ for virtualization

Server virtualization technology in itself is a game-changing application. And in an economic downturn, virtualization becomes an even more powerful weapon in the IT arsenal. Diane Greene, VMware’s former CEO and co-founder used to label the technology as recession proof. And true enough, this green technology can help the financial bottom line, but it has a lot more to offer than what many people have already put in place.

In a bad economy, doing more with less is something we all strive to achieve. Virtualization definitely helps to that end, but what happens after server consolidation? What do you do after you’ve consolidated and provisioned your virtual environments? How does your staff manage, control, and make the most use of this technology? Management vendors hope to have an answer to those questions.

During the CA World trade show, John Swainson, CEO of CA, told audience members in his keynote address that the many IT advances that are providing significant customer benefits are also adding complexity and cost to an already complicated IT environment. And technologies like virtualization and cloud computing are adding layers that need to be governed, managed, and secured.

When talking about virtualization, Swainson said it “promises myriad benefits — from reduced costs, improved service quality, and increased agility, to a smaller carbon footprint and reduced business risk — to acute concerns for business today. With a sound virtualization strategy and effective virtualization management, an organization should be able to transform IT management and provide dramatic business benefits — a compelling attraction in today’s challenging economic conditions.”

Swainson called management the “killer app for virtualization,” saying management is the technology that will allow virtualization to achieve its full potential and deliver on all of the benefits that are being talked about.

“CA’s approach to virtualization is all about managing risk and ensuring service quality so companies can drive real value from virtualization,” he said. “Our technology discovers application dependencies and relationships so IT professionals know which virtual and physical resources are supporting critical business processes and can manage them accordingly.”

Management of virtualization environments has bubbled up to the top over the last year. As the underlying platform technologies continue to drop in price, the perceived value gets extended to its management applications. VMware, Microsoft and Citrix continue to build out their own management applications to further extend their technologies, and third-party companies like CA continue to offer their own take on virtualization management — like CA’s release of CA Advanced Systems Management and CA Data Center Automation Manager.