CA Technologies Attacks 'VM Stall' with Innovative CA Virtual Portfolio

Delivers Comprehensive Virtualization Management Capabilities and Further Expands CA Virtual with Security Solution and Foundation Suite

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CA Technologies

Jul 19, 2010, 09:00 ET

ISLANDIA, N.Y., July 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CA Technologies (Nasdaq: CA) today announced the general availability of five products in the powerful CA Virtual portfolio, which offer comprehensive management capabilities designed to help increase business agility by providing a better way to provision, control, assure, secure and optimize virtual environments. The five products announced today are CA Virtual Assurance, CA Virtual Automation, CA Virtual Configuration, CA Virtual Assurance for Infrastructure Managers, and CA Virtual Privilege Manager. The company also introduced the CA Virtual Foundation Suite, which combines select virtualization management products at a compelling price point.

"The CA Technologies virtualization management portfolio is the ideal fit for customers looking to improve the efficiency, quality, and agility of their virtualized and private cloud environments," said Roger Pilc, general manager of the Virtualization and Automation customer solutions unit at CA Technologies. "Our portfolio is designed from the ground up to deliver new levels of speed and flexibility; anytime, anywhere application development and delivery in a variety of environments; exceptional manageability, service assurance, and security; all of which can help to significantly lower cost and provide a compelling ROI."

Today's offerings from CA Technologies are designed to help eliminate the VM stall faced by many organizations today. After virtualizing the "low-hanging fruit," which typically means the conversion of no more than 20 to 30 percent of physical servers to virtual machines, a variety of factors can conspire to stall progress, including: complex application and infrastructure performance issues, security and compliance concerns, concerns regarding uncontrolled VM sprawl, capacity management complexity, staffing and skill levels.

Many organizations in virtualization stall never manage to virtualize their tier 2, tier 1, and mission-critical systems. Stuck at the first stage on the virtualization maturity curve, these organizations are unable to leverage the entry-level benefits of server consolidation into infrastructure optimization, automation and orchestration, and the promise of a dynamic data center and private cloud. This in turn means that they fail to realize the full scope of benefits from virtualization: not just cost reduction, but also business and IT agility, management efficiency, market responsiveness, service improvements, and staffing benefits.

General Availability of CA Virtual Products

First unveiled at CA World on May 17, 2010, the CA virtualization management portfolio is designed to help emerging and large enterprises overcome virtual stall by providing a better way to provision, control, assure, secure and optimize complex virtualized environments. The CA Virtual portfolio features several solutions specifically designed to deliver robust virtualization management capabilities for virtualization-focused administrators. The portfolio also offers more advanced capabilities for integrating specialized virtualization management into the end-to-end management of hybrid physical and virtual systems, networks, storage and applications, as well as connecting IT infrastructure with business policies and priorities.

New Security Capabilities Expand CA Virtual

CA Technologies today broadened its CA Virtual portfolio by adding a new security solution – CA Virtual Privilege Manager.

The use of virtual environments in data centers has grown rapidly and organizations have begun to use virtualization to help streamline their operations and reduce their operating costs. However, regardless of whether it is a physical or virtual environment, the need for security remains.

"According to Gartner, 'through 2012, 60 percent of virtualized servers will be less secure than the physical servers they replace, dropping to 30 percent by the end of 2015'*," added Pilc. "CA Technologies believes as virtual server use continues to grow, organizations run the risk of losing control of their environments and the potential for malicious activity or user error increases dramatically."

Leveraging CA Technologies position as a leader in both virtual systems management and security management, CA Virtual Privilege Manager is designed to control privileged access to virtual environments by securing console access to the hypervisor and managing privileged access to all of the virtual images running on the virtualization server as well as the service console. Key capabilities of the solution include privileged user password management for the virtual machines and service console, fine-grained administrative access controls to the hypervisor service console, service console hardening, and original user activity monitoring in virtual environments.

Compelling New Suite Offering

CA Virtual Foundation Suite is a combined offering of CA Virtual Assurance, CA Virtual Automation, and CA Virtual Configuration. The suite, which offers a discount on the individual products, is aimed at the significant proportion of organizations that have embarked on virtualization projects without an enterprise-class management foundation, and as a result, are facing a potential firestorm of poor performance, resourcing gaps, and damaged business confidence. CA Virtual Foundation Suite changes the game by offering the virtualization management foundation that can ease adoption and broaden expansion, as well as help drive both immediate and long-term business results.

For more information about the CA virtualization management portfolio, visit http://www.ca.com/us/virtual.aspx.

* Source: Gartner, Inc., "Addressing the Most Common Security Risks in Data Center Virtualization Projects", Neil MacDonald, 25 January 2010.

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About CA Technologies

CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA) is an IT management software and solutions company with expertise across all IT environments – from mainframe and distributed, to virtual and cloud. CA Technologies manages and secures IT environments and enables customers to deliver more flexible IT services. CA Technologies innovative products and services provide the insight and control essential for IT organizations to power business agility. The majority of the Global Fortune 500 relies on CA Technologies to manage evolving IT ecosystems. For additional information, visit CA Technologies at www.ca.com.

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