ITSM & Automation Greatness
May 2017 - Upcoming news, webinars, and events
Announcement from the CA ITSM Account team
Hello there!
We support the CA IT Service Management and Automation products such as:
- CA Service Desk/Service Catalog
- CA IT Asset Management (software/hardware)
- CA Client Automation
- CA Configuration Automation
- CA Process Automation
Our main objective for this newsletter is to extend our reach to our existing customers and Account teams with webcasts, new feature enhancements, upcoming events details and industry relevant articles under one centralized space.
IT Asset Management
Software Asset Manangement
SAM tools are rapidly evolving, and offer a broad spectrum of features and functionality, making it difficult for I&O leaders and their teams to classify vendor offerings. To aid in this categorization, Gartner breaks down SAM into discrete activities.
SAM is rapidly evolving and growing in importance because of increasingly complex software licensing schemes. SAM falls within the remit of IT asset management. However, SAM tools need deeper connections with core life cycle management processes, and more data about physical, mobile, virtual and cloud platforms, than broad ITAM tools.
The major SAM tool activities, previously highlighted in the figure below, are:
- Platform discovery
- Platform and software inventory
- Inventory normalization
- Reconciliation of external information
- Optimization of license position
- Information sharing
See where CA Technologies ranks among the Core SAM Capabilities against other vendors in the market: https://www.gartner.com/doc/reprints?id=1-3QYYGWH&ct=170117&st=sb
CA Technologies Use Case: Saving $23 million through control of global IT Assets
Solution: With CA IT Asset Manager, CA Technologies can track 137,500 assets from
procurement through to disposal. The solution reduces risk by simplifying license compliance management.
Benefit: CA Technologies has achieved cost avoidance savings of $23 million in seven years through improved asset utilization. Greater governance of its global IT assets has improved budget forecast and simplified support.
Read the full story: https://www.ca.com/content/dam/ca/us/files/case-studies/ca-technologies-saves-23-million-through-greater-control-of-global-it-assets.pdf
First Horizon Use Case: Automating Asset Management
Solution: First Horizon leverages CA's IT Asset Manager and Client Automation to discover and track its hardware and software assets. The solution provides a comprehensive inventory with automated alerts and self-service capabilities.
Benefit: First Horizon has simplified how it procures, tracks and manages assets, saving many hours each year by more effectively managing the assets. With better visibility, it can safeguard compliance, maximize asset reuse and reduce licensing costs.
Read the full story: https://www.ca.com/content/dam/ca/us/files/case-studies/first-horizon-mitigates-risk-and-effectively-manages-assets-with-greater-intelligence-and-automation.PDF
IT Process Automation
UNUM Use Case: Accelerates time-to-market for new business services and frees up 600 hours a month
Challenge
To cope with business demand, the IT team needs to build up to 30 servers per month. A highly manual process not only took 20 hours per device but also prevented full server standardization.
Solution
With CA Process Automation, Unum has been able to automate around a dozen core infrastructure tasks, including server deployment, maintenance and retirement. Workflows can be easily adapted and any issues quickly detected.
Benefit
An automated approach has saved Unum nearly 600 hours a month, with new servers now deployed in a matter of minutes. Builds and security protocols have been standardized, which safeguards the quality of customer services
Read the full story here: https://www.ca.com/us/collateral/case-studies/unum-accelerates-time-to-market-for-new-business-services-and-frees-up-600-hours-a-month.html
Beta Validation Program: CA Process Automation Service Pack 04.3.02
CA is pleased to invite you to participate in the CA Process Automation Service Pack 04.3.02 Beta Validation Program. This release includes:
- Open API- As of today, REST API support is provided in PAM through Catalyst container. However, Catalyst is no more strategic to CA and has limited supportability. Therefore, in this release, we are exposing similar REST APIs which can be consumed without Catalyst. These API’s are better performant, more scalable and can be load balanced across different nodes in a clustered environment.
- Scalability & Performance- As part of this feature, loading of operations dashboard improved by almost 3x times, improved linear scaling of requests on installing additional orchestrators in a cluster, and eliminates bottlenecks in workflow engine improved the performance by 4x times. All in all, this feature would mean a more reliable and efficient orchestration enabling customers to meet their SLAs.
- AWS Connector- This connector includes most widely used operations around EC2 instances, Storage, etc. In total, we will be delivering 60 critical operations which could be performed on AWS from within Process Automation itself.
In addition to above, this Service Pack addresses some reported functionality issues, delivers support for several up-to-date platforms such as ActiveMQ 5.14.1, OpenSSH 1.6.16, TLS 1.2, MSSQL 2016 and Windows 2016.
Your participation offers you the ability to validate/access Pre-Release CA Software in your own environment, allowing you to provide feedback on product enhancements, quality, and the Validation Program.
To participate, you should be willing to:
- Register in our validation community website and agree to the usual non-disclosure terms.
- Set aside the time required to properly test the features of interest, and provide feedback.
- At the end of the beta program(5th May, 2017) indicate your overall satisfaction by filling out a brief survey on your thoughts about the demonstration and overall product direction
If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to Vinay.Chittimilla@ca.com or sridhar.Baratam@ca.com.
Register now
CA Process Automation Service Pack 04.3.02 Beta Validation Program
Important Links
Below links are accessible only after registering to the program
Service Management
Pink Elephant- 2016 ITSM Innovation of the Year- Silver Medal for CA xFlow user experience
CA Service Management 14.01.03: The xFlow User Experience
Over the past decade, advancements in technology and process have yielded productivity improvements in most facets of IT. So why has the average cost of a service desk ticket and IT service management (ITSM) maturity remained the same for many years?
The ethnographic research that we conducted this year shows that ITSM tools do not effectively help IT analysts handle tickets with more efficiency, knowledge or intelligence. Wait, what? It’s time to rethink the service desk from the ground up, starting with the human element.
Here at CA Technologies, we have added the "human element" to be the main center of our latest value pack release. We recently just delivered the new xFlow user experience for CA Service Management, enabling your analysts to deliver the kind of service your employees deserve.
Click above to access datasheet!
Ask me if you have any questions about how to download the value pack.
What is your number one investment area in the ITSM space for 2017?
Five Factors to Consider for Selecting a Modern IT Service Management Platform
Apprize360 Intelligence (3rd Party):
- Does the ITSM solution support integration into the broader IT management ecosystem?
- Does the ITSM solution have effective integrated asset management capabilities and software license optimization?
- Does the solution support robust change management?
- Does the ITSM solution ensure enterprise-capable process automation across the full solution base (ITSM, ITAM, IT Ops, etc.)
- Can the ITSM solution support today’s consumer of technology, their expectations, and their desire for a modern user experience?
Ask me how to get your copy of this vendor comparison!