Mercury Interactive Corp. has put an architecture and road map around its Business Technology Optimization strategy, creating four Optimization Centers intended to boost IT efficiency through automation and integration of functions.
The Optimization Centers consist of the Mercury IT Governance Center, Mercury Quality Center, Mercury Performance Center and Mercury Business Availability Center, said officials, in Sunnyvale, Calif. Each center includes a set of software, services and “embedded best practices” aimed at solving critical IT problems, according to a Mercury spokesman.
As part of the launch, Mercury enhanced 15 products and added four new ones—some from recent acquisitions of companies such as Kintana Inc. and Performant Inc.
Officials said the architecture aligns with the movement of IT organizations toward so-called centers of excellence. But not everyone in the industry agrees the trend is substantive.
“Theres been a lot of lip service given, with talk about [IT infrastructure libraries] and operational processes,” said Glenn ODonnell, an analyst with Meta Group Inc., in Palmerton, Pa. “There are certain responsibilities that IT has to the business. There is interest in what they are and how to control those.”
Each center includes a set of applications that automate and optimize an IT function, along with a foundation layer that integrates the functions and allows data to be shared across the applications. Each center also includes a dashboard that provides a business view into the performance of that center.
The Mercury IT Governance Center focuses on IT priorities, processes and execution. In the application delivery space, Mercury Quality Center focuses on the quality of new applications, and the Mercury Performance Center focuses on the performance of new applications. The Performance Center adds a new Mercury Capacity Planning tool to Mercurys existing LoadRunner, Mercury Tuning and Mercury Diagnostics tools. The Business Availability Center adds a new Customer Impact application and includes Mercury Topaz Business Process, End User Management and Topaz Service Level Management.
The new and enhanced products in the centers will be available between now and the first quarter of next year.