29 April 2003 Computer Associates (CA) is to join a host of companies offering ‘on-demand’ computing with the launch of six new products next week.
Chairman and CEO Sanjay Kumar will unveil the products in a keynote address at the annual Networld+Interop computer trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada on Tuesday.
CA claims the new “managing-on-demand” products will enable customers to make the best possible use of idle servers or under-utilised storage drives and put them to work on applications that require them. In the long-term this will save companies money because they will not have to invest in additional hardware.
CA joins a long line of technology suppliers embracing the on-demand trend, which includes Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Sun Microsystems. CA is one of the first software-only companies to tackle the concept.
However, there are clearly competitive motives behind the new product launches. Since companies such as IBM often host on-demand infrastructure on behalf of customers, typically for a monthly fee, this could reduce the need for systems management software, one of CA’s flagship businesses.
The core function of the new software products will be automatic server provisioning, a task that is typically performed manually. This will drastically reduce the time it takes to configure servers or storage to handle particular applications or swap applications between servers depending on available processing capacity.
CA seems to be targeting the products at organisations that want to build a utility-like IT infrastructure but do not want it to be managed by a third party.
“This is what differentiates us from everyone else in the marketplace,” said CA chief technology officer Yogesh Gupta. “We have come out with software products that allow people to have the benefits of on-demand computing today.”
