CA to Discuss Automation, Virtualization Management and Cloud Computing at Interop

Three Executives to Participate in Four Panels Over Two Days

ISLANDIA, N.Y., CA, Inc. (NASDAQ: CA) today announced that three executives in the company’s Infrastructure Management and Automation business unit will participate in four panel discussions at Interop. The business technology conference will be held in New York November 16-20, 2009.

Stephen Elliot, vice president of strategy, will participate in a discussion entitled “Is Automation a Killer Idea or a Career Killer?” on Wednesday, November 18 at 4 p.m. ET. Following is a summary of the session, which will be moderated by Jim Metzler, vice president, Ashton, Metzler & Associates.

The ticking time bomb for IT organizations is that today roughly 75 percent of IT resources are consumed maintaining the status quo, and that percentage creeps up every year. If IT organizations don’t make some fundamental changes they will soon not be able to provide any new value-added functionality. Automation holds the promise to both improve quality and free up resources. Most IT organizations have made only modest attempts to automate as they are fearful of losing control over IT. The members of this panel will discuss what explicit functionality IT organizations can safely automate.

Elliot will also participate in a panel entitled “The People, Process And Technology Of Next Generation Data Centers” on Thursday, November 19 at 9 a.m. ET. Following is summary of the session, which will be moderated by Doug Washburn, analyst, Infrastructure & Operations, Forrester Research.

Technologies like virtualization and automation tools are cornerstone to the next-generation data center (NGDC)—but without the proper processes and staff skills to manage them, tomorrow’s data center will be no better off than today’s. Likewise, even the right people and process fall short without sufficient technology investment that can minimize labor-intensive tasks. With that in mind, the NGDC is a collection of people, process and technology that support one another. This panel discussion will identify the key people, process and technology considerations to help data center managers plan for the NGDC today.

Derick Wong, senior director of product marketing, will participate in a discussion entitled “The Language of the Cloud: Scripting and Automation” on Thursday, November 19 at 9 a.m. Following is a description of the session, which will be moderated by Alistair Croll, principal analyst, Bitcurrent.

In a cloud environment, you don’t rack and stack servers anymore; instead, you click and drag them. This relieves IT operators of many physical chores, but it creates a new one: server sprawl. To deal with this, most cloud operations teams rely heavily on scripts that automate common functions such as setting up servers or migrating configurations. Those scripts, however, are often tailored to a particular cloud platform—so the same tools that were supposed to liberate IT have inadvertently locked it into a particular cloud environment. If scripting and automation are keys to the success of cloud models, they’re not getting the attention they deserve. This panel looks at scripting best practices, automation, and standardization.

Tanvir Hussain, senior vice president of product management, will participate in a panel entitled “The Impact of Cloud Computing on Network Management” on Thursday, November 19 at 10:15 a.m. Following is a summary of the session, which will be moderated by Jim Metzler.

Cloud computing has the potential to be a management nightmare. IT organizations that implement private clouds need to ensure that when they migrate a virtual machine (VM) to another server that the VM retains the same security, storage access and QoS configurations and policies it had previously. In the case of public cloud services there are at least three separate management domains: the enterprise, the WAN service provider and the various cloud computing service providers. Effective management requires that detailed, consistent management data be gathered from each of the management domains. This panel will outline what IT organizations must do to effectively manage cloud computing.

CA will showcase solutions for business-driven automation, virtualization management and cloud computing, among others, in booth 228.

About CA

CA (NASDAQ: CA), the world’s leading independent IT management software company, helps customers optimize IT for better business results. CA’s Enterprise IT Management solutions for mainframe and distributed computing enable Lean IT—empowering organizations to more effectively govern, manage and secure their IT operations. For more information, visit www.ca.com.