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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / AUGUST 18, 2003; VOL. 2 NO. 33
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Breaking News - Operating Systems
& Middleware:
Opsware Announces New Opsware Web
Service APIs
Opsware Inc., a leading provider of data center automation (DCA) software,
announced new Opsware Web Services APIs for the Opsware System. The new
Opsware Web Services APIs allow other IT systems, such as customers' existing
monitoring, trouble ticketing, billing, and virtualization technologies to
quickly and seamlessly exchange information with the Opsware System, extending
the value of Opsware's DCA software across the IT organization. The Opsware
Web Services APIs will be available in September with Opsware System 4.0, code
named Curie. Opsware will be demonstrating the capabilities of Curie in the
Partner Pavilion at this year's HP World conference in booth 435.
In June 2003, Opsware and HP forged a strategic relationship to integrate
Opsware's DCA software, which automates key software and application
operations, with the HP Utility Data Center (UDC), the market-leading data
center virtualization solution. The Opsware and UDC integration will be the
first to showcase the new Opsware Web Services APIs. Combined, the offering
provides enterprise customers a comprehensive utility computing solution that
delivers software automation, virtualization of computing resources, and
application metering.
"HP customers are looking for integrated solutions that enable an adaptive
enterprise to help them respond to business demands in real time and drive a
greater return on IT investment," said Nick van der Zweep, director of utility
computing, HP Enterprise Systems Group. "HP applauds Opsware's web services-
based approach because like HP, Opsware is committed to Web Services and the
industry initiatives to standardize interfaces."
The Opsware System maintains a real-time repository of information about
the
data center environment, servers, software, configurations, and operational
events. Using Opsware Web Services APIs to share this information across
systems enables dramatic improvements in service quality, through
unprecedented visibility into assets, policies and operations. For example, a
Network Operations Center watching an HP OpenView console is able to reduce
time to recovery based on alerts if they know information such as who owns a
particular server, what software it's running, the SLA assigned to the server,
what changes were made to the server in the last 24 hours, or what business
function the server is performing.
"Most IT organizations contain many disparate systems, each of which
contain
some, but not all of the information necessary to make rapid, well informed
decisions," said Tim Howes, Chief Technology Officer and EVP of Development of
Opsware Inc. "The new Opsware Web Services APIs enable greater efficiency and
information sharing, giving enterprises a better knowledge about what's really
happening in their IT environments."
The Opsware System exposes Web Services interfaces, enabling developers to
use
any Web Services-enabled development environment -- from Microsoft Visual
Studio .NET to BEA WebLogic Workshop to simple Perl scripts -- to write to the
interfaces. Opsware's support for leading Web Services standards such as XML,
SOAP, and WSDL, ensure that enterprises are not locked into proprietary
protocols that make integration more complex and costly, and is another
example of the Opsware System's flexibility.
A fast growing category, data center automation software enables IT
organizations to dramatically reduce the costs associated with operating
servers, software and distributed applications in data centers. According to
Goldman Sachs' May 2003 IT Spending Survey, 46% of Fortune 1000 CIO's are
actively trying to reduce costs. Using automation, IT organizations can reduce
the costs of critical operations like provisioning, patching and deployment by
80%. The Opsware System also enables corporations to speed operations
execution times by 70-80% and realize the benefits of a utility computing
model. Organizations can use Opsware's data center automation software to
automate operations across Windows, Linux and UNIX servers and applications
distributed across multiple data centers.
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