With Oblicore, organizations design, monitor and manage service level agreements across their IT portfolio in business terms. With Oblicore's contract management system, IT managers can take information from IT environments and compare it to service level contracts.
"You can determine whether the IT is meeting the contracts or not, says Jay Fry, VP of business unit strategy, CA. "It's a way to watch what's going on and describe it in business terms, and describes what you need to deliver and how."
"It's relevant for CIOs trying to explain what is going on in their environment and the benefits for their organizations," Fry continues. "Service level managers can tell if they are getting what they are supposed to be for the business."
Oblicore's solutions also extend CA's capabilities in cloud vendor management. As enterprises leverage cloud services, lack of direct management control makes these contracts the primary assurance mechanism.
Analyst/consulting firm Enterprise Management Associates research director Lisa Erickson-Harris commented on the news, "EMA believes cloud computing trends will further increase the demand for service-based management. Oblicore's strengths are well-suited to bridge the IT/business gap to demonstrate service delivery results at each service lifecycle phase."
The acquisition strengthens CA's footprint in application performance management. Last September, CA acquired NETQoS, which also serves customers in systems management and cloud services management.
“Adding Oblicore brings business management capability to IT senior management, providing the ability to define, document, manage and report on the IT services and the overall IT service portfolio,” says Kris Brittain, Research Vice President, Gartner, Inc. “This becomes the fundamental dashboard to assist IT in the selection and on-going monitoring service levels delivered by cloud services.”
Oblicore's customers include AT&T, ABN AMRO, British Telecom, Cable & Wireless, Chrysler, France Telecom, ING, Lufthansa Systems, Siemens Medical Solutions and T-Systems. Terms of the deal were not released.
Valerie Valentine is senior editor for Information Management. You can follow her on Twitter @ValValentineIM.
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