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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / JUNE 23, 2003: VOL. 2 NO. 25
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Systems/Enterprise:
COMPUTER ASSOCIATES SEES GRID ERA
SOON
If a recent series of on-the-road presentations CA has staged in New
Zealand
and Australia is any indication, CA is quite likely to become a mainstay of a
new paradigm of computing usage gradually dawning on the industry.
Dominic Schiavello, CA's Australian-based marketing manager, sees big
things
coming for CA, especially for its top-earning Unicenter division.
"It encompasses enterprise management, including operations, IT resource
and
service management. The key functionality is making sure that IT
infrastructure is aligned with business needs.
"Typically most companies have an overcapacity of computing power because
they're managing for the peaks; in demand troughs, processing power goes idle.
Our product set aims to deliver dynamic management that better utilises back-
end processing capacity."
According to CA's vision of the world, this will become an increasingly
important feature over the coming years, particularly with the advent of grid
computing. "We're entering the on-demand era, where business cycles will
determine how computer resources are utilised. Computing demand can vary
wildly - for example, when successful promotions cause sudden loads on
internet servers.
"Utility grid on-demand computing is the next big thing; applications will
be
able to run independently of the hardware and will communicate via strong
standards, defined by web services and crossing boundaries between Java and
.Net.
"Grid computing is analogous to the early years of electricity - at first
factories ran their own generators to produce electricity for local use but
eventually generation was shared over a grid for greater overall
efficiency.
"Grid computing will allow users to outsource computer power dynamically,
using only as much as they need at the time. The existing internet already has
sufficient bandwidth to handle this model, so it isn't a matter of technology
slowing the adoption of this so much as a failure of existing software to be
architected to take advantage of what already exists.
"Where we come in is the management of such shared resources. Our Unicenter
framework is ready now for management of these resources, although we think it
will be another five years or so before the grid model becomes widespread.
"In the meantime, we're ideally placed to handle the current round of
server
consolidation - a lot of pre-Y2K server hardware is due for replacement, and
hardware manufacturers are taking the opportunity to promote more flexible
hardware that can be dynamically reconfigured according to demand. At the
moment it's mostly sold with an eye to use within the corporation, but sooner
or later that will change and we'll be ready for it."
"It's what CA has evolved for," Computer Associates regional manager for
New
Zealand Tony Armfield says. "In the mid-'80s, we led in mainframe management.
In the '90s, we led in management of distributed client-server environments,
with our original Unicenter framework. In 2001 we modularised the Unicenter
product and this is the next step, which will allow users to leverage and
manage their existing investments, regardless of their technology
choices."
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