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No one ever said that understanding and deploying the DevOps method of developing software would be a simple or uncomplicated thing to do. But Automic Software, which has been providing automation of business processes since 10 years before the internet hit the mainstream, is striving to do just that.
Automic on Oct. 4 launched Automic V12, a unified suite of business automation products designed to combine and simplify processes across enterprise operations—including multiple cloud connections—and promote DevOps initiatives. These attributes are cornerstones of new-gen IT systems.
In short, V12 removes maintenance windows, makes managing core business applications easier to manipulate and drives intelligent insights across automation silos. In providing these features, Automic V12 speeds up and makes easier to deploy DevOps-type functionality, which ultimately can translate mightily to improvement of a company’s bottom-line results.
Agile Development Can Contribute Mightily to a Company’s Profit Margin
High-performance IT organizations using the DevOps approach deploy their services much more frequently and many times faster than average shops. They also have fewer failures and recover data much faster in disaster scenarios; all of this directly impacts an enterprise’s profit margin. See this eWEEK slideshow for more background.
Digital transformation is pushing the need for agility and speed across organizations of all sizes that are accustomed to long cycles of app development. DevOps has emerged as an answer to fast development of customer facing apps for both web and mobile.
“For instance, we now automate the upgrade process for Siebel Systems,” CEO Todd DeLaughter told eWEEK. “Siebel is typically used as a customer front-end solution—a lot of telcos use it that way. But it’s particularly thorny to upgrade, and it can take up to eight hours of downtime to upgrade the application.”
Eight hours of downtime, um, isn’t optimal for a 24/7-running, customer-facing application.
“So we automate not only their updates, but we also update all of the customization that companies tend to develop around Siebel—they call it non-repository items. So for that whole process, we can take what can be a typical eight-hour upgrade cycle [of downtime] and automate that to near zero,” DeLaughter said.
New Product Suite Works for Several Big Enterprise Apps
Automic also does this for other enterprise applications, such as SAP, a prevalent banking application called Temenos T24, and others. This transformation of legacy software to what amounts to virtual new-gen software can save companies a lot in terms of capital costs.
“As organizations move toward digital transformation, enterprises are being asked to ‘rip and replace’ their core business applications into the cloud,” DeLaughter said. “We believe you don’t have to throw out all your battle-tested operational know-how in order to increase speed and agility across your organizations. Automic V12 has been designed to drive agility across operations, while empowering new DevOps initiatives.”
Key features inside the Automic V12 unified product portfolio include:
—Automic Workload Automation V12, to centrally create, manage and monitor business processing across hybrid clouds.
—Automic Release Automation V12, to coordinate application release and deployment for core business applications and DevOps initiatives across your hybrid clouds.
—Automic Service Orchestration V12, to orchestrate automation services across the business, application and infrastructure layers of your hybrid clouds.
Removing maintenance windows, as described in the Siebel example above, is one of the most relevant features of V12.
“Automic’s new agents update themselves with zero business impact by intelligently determining when to upgrade based on their workload and operational schedule,” De Laughter said. “Automic V12 enables our customers to achieve zero-downtime upgrades by embracing our unique blueprint for continuous delivery of their own core business applications.”
In V12, Automic’s new Environment Blueprint Provisioning enables users to encapsulate their application deployment plans and models, without changes, to include the required stack template. Now enterprise IT can provide on-demand working application environments at the click of a button, DeLaughter said.
Enterprises typically use disparate tools to automate different silos across their enterprise environment, from ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems, to data warehousing, big data and the cloud. Automic V12 provides a unified interface, encompassing unified analytics and SLA (service-level agreement) management, to provide enterprise operations with intelligent insights across their various automation silos.
Background on Automic
Automic predates the current automation trend by an entire generation, seeing the IT automation future years ago. It started way back in 1985 by developing an early job scheduling software application and has been evolving and expanding its product line ever since.
The Bellevue, Wash. and Vienna-based company provides private cloud, big data, internet of things and DevOps packages to about 2,700 customers, including such household names as GE, Bosch, eBay, Netflix and Vodafone.
Automic stakes a claim as the largest pure-play automation vendor in the market, focusing solely on business automation for more than 20 years. Its software enables IT system agility and reliability within on-premises, cloud or hybrid landscapes; it is put to work most often in areas such as Release Automation/DevOps and Workload Automation, Orchestration and Provisioning.
Availability and Pricing
Automic Workload Automation V12, Automic Release Automation V12 and Automic Service Orchestration V12 are available starting Oct. 4 for general shipment. All plugins are immediately available on the Automic Marketplace. Pricing is on-demand for non-Automic customers.