CA Extends Reach Out to Virtual Machines

CA officials say they are responding to the needs of customers who want to integrate physical and virtual server management now that virtual machine software is a mainstream part of their IT infrastructure. But rather than roll out its own virtual machine management software, CA is emphasizing the need to integrate its CA Spectrum Assurance management tools with management platforms developed by virtual machine software companies such as VMware, Citrix and Microsoft. Here's a look at the interface:

Several CA products have been upgraded. In addition to extending CA Spectrum Assurance, CA extended that ability of its eHealth Performance Manager to monitor virtual machines; the ability of its Insight Database Performance Manager to monitor databases running on top of virtual servers; and the ability of its Spectrum Automation Manager to provision virtual machines.

CA's move to embrace virtualization, which echoes a similar move by IBM, follows the announcement of its plans to acquire NetQoS, which also has a set of tools that integrate the management of physical and virtual servers. By supporting virtual machine management, CA joins an ongoing industry battle between providers of traditional systems management tools and a range of startup companies and virtual machine providers that have recently emerged that are squarely focused on virtualization management.

It remains to be seen how this struggle for control over virtual environments will play out. But at the moment, customers seem to be favoring integration strategy between existing systems management tools and providers of dedicated virtual machine management tools. Over the long haul, odds are good that customers will ultimately want to see more convergence of these tools rather than continuing to pay separate licensing fees for both.