CA introduced a new set of software, services and training programs June 27 that aim to help its customers implement and automate yet another set of regulations, IT Infrastructure Library best practices.
The ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) is a framework of best-practice approaches intended to facilitate the delivery of high-quality IT services.
These procedures are supplier-independent and have been developed to provide guidance across the gamut of an enterprises IT infrastructure, development and operation systems.
CAs Service Management Accelerator is designed to let IT organizations simplify standards compliance across these ITIL processes, a CA spokesperson said.
Manual ITIL implementations are costly and time-consuming, and they can compromise the uniformity of critical management processes, the spokesperson said.
CAs Service Management Accelerator lets customers unify people, processes and technology while automating all ITIL processes across both service support and service delivery, the spokesperson said.
CA, based in Islandia, N.Y., designed the Service Management Accelerator to be adaptable to customers specific needs—which are driven by the relative complexity of their service environments, the scale of their IT operations and the degree to which they have automated ITIL processes, the spokesperson said.
“Because IT is such a strategic enabler of our business, MyFamily.com has structured its IT teams to reflect the way ITIL defines IT management best practices,” said Daren Thayne, Chief Technology Officer, MyFamily.com.
“CA has provided us with the support we needed to automate these essential ITIL processes.”
Key features of CA Service Management Accelerator, as listed by the company, include:
- a dedicated CMDB (configuration management database) that provides a common repository for all asset information and maps assets to the business services the customers system supports
- a mechanism for managing change across the enterprise
- consolidation and reconciliation of disparate sources of IT-related data in the context of business priorities
- full visibility into configuration item information such as resource attributes, relationships and dependencies across the enterprise.
Using Universal Federation Adapters, including out-of-the-box integration with Microsoft SMS, CA CMDB enables organizations to collect, manage and maintain a single view of configuration data from CA, third-party IT management applications and in-house developed applications and solutions.
The new database provides more than 70 relationship types, 140 pre-defined CI classes and 200 reports and queries out of the box, the spokesman said.
CA Service Management Accelerator also provides a three-dimensional visual map for ITIL processes based upon an underground transit system or “subway system” metaphor, the spokesman said.
ITIL Service Support and Service Delivery processes are presented as “tracks” and “subway stations,” providing IT executives, strategists and implementers with a common reference point for viewing and prioritizing ITIL processes for automation.
CA Service Management Accelerator is available immediately, and CA CMDB is scheduled to ship in August, the spokesman said.