New CA Initiatives Help Customers Derive Greater Business Value From Mainframe Investments

CA (NYSE: CA) today announced a series of initiatives to help customers derive maximum long-term business value from their significant investments in mainframe computing technology.

The role of the mainframe continues to evolve as enterprises become increasingly dependent on highly scalable, highly available and highly secure IT services capable of supporting large-scale database activity and intense transaction loads. At the same time, people with the skills necessary to effectively manage mainframe platforms are becoming more expensive to hire and more difficult to find. IT organizations are therefore under significant pressure to improve the efficiency and effectiveness with which they govern, manage and secure their mainframe environments.

With these initiatives, CA is empowering its customers to successfully respond to these escalating pressures.

“Mainframe systems power global business and support today’s most critical and scalable applications,” said Chris O’Malley, general manager of CA’s Mainframe Business Unit. “CA’s new mainframe management initiatives demonstrate once again that we are the premier management partner for companies seeking to fully leverage this essential computing platform.”

The initiatives announced today include new mainframe suites, new no-cost consulting services, and simplified models for pricing and licensing

CA’s new Mainframe Suites streamline critical management operations and ensure optimum performance. They include:

* Mainframe Performance Management Suite - enables continuous processing of TCP/IP, CICS, DB2 and WebSphere MQ applications by automating the collection and prioritization of system information from multiple systems to ensure problems are discovered and fixed before they impact availability. Its centralized management simplifies performance tuning, reduces software maintenance and overhead costs, improves staff accuracy and effectiveness, and facilitates fulfillment of service level agreements.
* Mainframe Security Management Suite - helps customers to identify exposures, validate security system integrity and effectiveness, and take corrective actions to safeguard business information, ensure privacy, and improve performance. Its use of consistent, centralized controls enables efficient analysis and administration of the entire environment.
* Mainframe Tape Utilization and Compliance Suite - enables customers to secure information with encryption, improve utilization, and simplify migration or consolidation projects. Its tight product integration and automation transparency helps customers contain costs, unify tape operations, and maximize the use and life of their storage investments—thereby reducing overall tape TCO.
* Mainframe Resource Management Suite - delivers accurate information for effective IT financial reporting, capacity planning, and system performance tuning. It automates the collection, archival and delivery of SMF metrics from multiple systems—saving time and CPU resources, while eliminating the risk of using wrong data.
* Mainframe Database Performance Management Suite - significantly enhances enterprise-wide database performance, saving time and conserving CPU resources. It works seamlessly to address DB2 for z/OS performance issues across subsystems, objects, applications and SQL—delivering the information needed for holistic DB2 performance management.
* Mainframe Automated Storage Optimization Suite - unifies major storage management operations by automating critical monitoring and analysis of DASD, tapes, tape management systems, robotics and virtual tape systems. It helps reduce costs and administration by simplifying management of complex enterprise storage environments, maximizing use of existing storage resources and ensuring protection and high-availability of applications and business information.

CA’s new Mainframe Value Program is a no-charge consulting service that helps eligible customers optimize their use of existing software resources. Under this program, CA’s technical specialists assess customers’ requirements and implementations, and then make recommendations based on best practices in order to ensure optimal ROI.

CA’s new simplified software license agreements and new pricing model, based on industry-standard MSUs, ease purchasing and renewals—while also providing customers with valuable discounts as their mainframe capacity grows. For a site with 1,000 MSUs (7,000 MIPS), for example, the list price for one of CA’s mainframe security or workload automation solutions would be about one-third less under the new MSU-based pricing model than it was under the former MIPS-based one.

CA Executives to Speak at SHARE

CA executives will present 35 sessions at the mainframe-focused SHARE Conference and Trade Show, February 24-29 in Orlando, Fla. Topics will include SOA governance challenges, best practices for managing IBM specialty processing engines, the emerging service-oriented enterprise, centralized management of IBM storage hardware and software, and tips for ITIL success. CA will also chair and participate in sessions on zNextGen, a user community aimed at students and younger professionals interested in mainframe programming.

About CA

CA (NYSE: CA) provides software solutions that enable customers to more effectively govern, manage and secure their increasingly complex information technology environments. By unifying and simplifying IT management, CA’s Enterprise IT Management vision empowers organizations to optimize business performance and sustain competitive advantage. Founded in 1976, CA serves customers in more than 140 countries. For more information, visit www.ca.com.
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