New Release Of CA’s Unicenter NSM Leverages SQL Server, Integrates With CA And Third-Party Solutions

Flagship Management Solution Optimizes Service Availability By Simplifying and Automating Critical IT Operations

To learn more about how customers are using Unicenter NSM r11.1 click here: www3.ca.com/Solutions/Collateral.aspx?CID=92884

ISLANDIA, N.Y., September 12, 2006 – CA (NYSE: CA) today announced a new release of Unicenter Network and Systems Management (Unicenter NSM) that offers a management database (MDB) built on Microsoft SQL Server and eases integration with CA and third-party management solutions—enabling customers to optimize service availability while protecting their existing IT investments.

Unicenter NSM safeguards critical business processes while reducing the cost and complexity of IT management. It ensures the health, availability and performance of heterogeneous enterprise IT infrastructures by monitoring and automatically managing servers, network components, storage resources, applications and other infrastructure components.

“At Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking, our goal is to make our IT infrastructure so reliable that it is transparent to the business,” said Patrick Mannion, vice president, Enterprise Monitoring Tools, Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking. “To accomplish this goal, we need tools that help us visualize trouble spots in our systems, networks, applications and databases and easily navigate between strategic and tactical views of our infrastructure. Unicenter NSM r11.1 delivers these essential views.”

Delivering on CA’s vision to unify and simplify enterprise IT management, Unicenter NSM r11.1 seamlessly integrates with other CA solutions that use the MDB—including numerous products in CA’s Service Management, IT Asset Management, and Desktop and Server Management solution areas. By providing a common repository for management data across the enterprise, the MDB accelerates problem identification and resolution, improves decision-making, and brings greater efficiency to core IT operations.

Unicenter NSM r11.1 provides continuous discovery across the entire IT environment, helping to ensure the accuracy and currency of MDB data. When a new device is introduced onto the network, for example, Unicenter NSM r11.1 can immediately discover and classify the device so that it can apply pre-set policies automatically.

“By using Microsoft SQL Server 2005 as a foundational technology for its MDB, CA is empowering customers to optimize the price-performance and improve TCO for their enterprise management platform,” said Lucho Torres, group product manager of SQL Server at Microsoft Corp. “This highly efficient MDB architecture is critical to IT organizations that have to manage larger and increasingly complex computing environments.”

Identifies Root Cause of Problems

Through its Management Command Center (MCC), Unicenter NSM r11.1 centralizes management of the diverse components that constitute today’s enterprise environments. With advanced alert and event correlation capabilities, it also identifies the root cause of problems and enables IT staffs to react to issues before they affect the delivery of critical services to the business.

“Our number one IT management challenge is separating problem ’signal’ from alarm ’noise,’” said Cody Lowder, Information Systems and Technology manager of Enterprise Management, Zions Management Services. “The advanced event correlation and root-cause analysis tools in Unicenter NSM r11.1 will greatly reduce our mean-time-to-repair and help us manage our infrastructure much more efficiently.”

Ensures Service Availability Across The Infrastructure

Unicenter NSM r11.1 interoperates with CA solutions such as SPECTRUM and eHealth, which provide deep visibility into how network health and performance affect service levels and availability. Its integration with a wide range of third-party management products—including Microsoft Operations Manager, HP OpenView, HP Insight Manager, Dell OpenManage, CiscoWorks, Citrix Presentation Server, OPnet ITguru, Fluke Networks and SPLUNK—delivers on CA’s commitment to an open management architecture and enables customers to ensure service health across the enterprise.

Additional features in Unicenter NSM r11.1 include:

* Adaptive configuration capabilities that assess which system resources are most critical to monitor on a particular server and then automatically determine a variable baseline for these resources.
* An alert management system, integrated with Unicenter Service Desk, which automates the trouble-ticket process—providing IT staff with the detailed information they need to quickly find the root causes of problems.
* Reporting enhancements that enable users to more easily navigate the extensive report library and drill into detailed graphical data views to gain greater insight into system status, system performance and trends.
* Support for SNMP v3 MIBs and traps to help customers initiate their transition to the next version of the management protocol and provide a higher level of security for management data.

“The ’point-and-click’ capabilities of the web reporting service are intuitive and have helped us more easily communicate and document our performance against our service level agreements to management,” said Luis Hernandez, lead software systems specialist, Information Services - Technical Services, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. “When we installed Unicenter NSM r11.1, we were able to easily transfer historical performance data and run a performance report right out of the box. Since it is all web-based, it has also allowed us to do more from remote locations, improving our overall efficiency.”

Unicenter NSM r11.1 incorporates several solutions into the core product that were previously offered as add-ons. This greatly simplifies installation and accelerates time-to-benefit for new customers. These solutions include Unicenter NSM Active Directory Management Option, Unicenter NSM Systems Performance Option, Unicenter NSM Monitoring Option for z/OS and Unicenter Management Portal.

CA and its partners offer a wide range of testing, assessment, training and migration services to help customers upgrade to Unicenter NSM r11.1

“With its open and integrated data store, advanced event correlation and management command center, Unicenter NSM r11.1 provides unmatched power to unify and simplify enterprise IT management,” said Ajei Gopal, senior vice president and general manager of CA’s Enterprise Systems Management business unit. “It’s the ideal solution for organizations seeking to leverage technology to optimize business performance.”

About CA

CA (NYSE: CA), one of the world’s largest information technology (IT) management software companies, unifies and simplifies the management of enterprise-wide IT. Founded in 1976, CA is headquartered in Islandia, N.Y., and serves customers in more than 140 countries. For more information, please visit http://ca.com.

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Copyright © 2006 CA. All Rights Reserved. One CA Plaza, Islandia, N.Y. 11749. All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.

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