CA Launches Mainframe 2.0 Initiative to Change the Way the Mainframe
is Managed Forever
Helps IBM z/OS Users to Meet New Budget, Skills and Computing
Challenges
Combines Across-the-Board Enhancements to CA’s Leading Mainframe
Management Solutions
LAS VEGAS (Business Wire EON/PRWEB ) November 18, 2008 --
CA (NASDAQ: CA) today unveiled Mainframe
2.0—a far-reaching initiative to help customers and partners
capitalize on the mainframe’s unique and timely advantages by radically
simplifying the governance, management, and security of IBM’s z/OS
platform.
The initiative—which combines across-the-board enhancements to CA’s
leading mainframe management solutions with new turnkey mainframe
management services—will enable customers to leverage their IBM
mainframes to more effectively satisfy continually growing business
computing demands in the face of limited budgets for technology and
human resources, an aging mainframe workforce, and intensifying pressure
to control energy consumption.
Simplifying Management Ownership
Under Mainframe 2.0, CA will simplify mainframe ownership and
optimization for IT organizations by:
-
Making its entire portfolio of mainframe management solutions easier
for less experienced IT staff to use
-
Creating a uniform browser-based look-and-feel across all CA mainframe
management solutions
-
Delivering automation and operational intelligence that insulate IT
staff from the underlying complexities of the IBM z/OS platform
-
Rationalizing and streamlining the acquisition, implementation and
integration of CA solutions—so they can be rapidly and effectively
deployed with rudimentary knowledge
-
Conforming to IBM’s software installation standards
-
Providing turnkey services that customers can use to address gaps in
internal staff skills and/or control staffing costs
These Mainframe 2.0 deliverables will enable CA customers to capitalize
on the unmatched and ever-evolving capabilities of the mainframe—a
computing platform universally viewed as the most scalable, reliable,
secure, cost-efficient, energy-efficient, and auditable.
“The mainframe, as it has been re-engineered in recent years by IBM, is
of singular value to large enterprises seeking to use IT for maximum
competitive advantage,” said Chris O’Malley, executive vice president
and general manager of CA’s Mainframe Business Unit. “CA’s mission with
our Mainframe 2.0 initiative is simply to ensure that our customers can
fully exploit this singular value—regardless of the staffing constraints
they may face now or in the future.”
Escalating Workloads, Fewer People
The mainframe’s unique attributes are particularly important in today’s
business environment—where growing workloads, constrained resources,
growing regulatory responsibilities, and corporate “green” mandates are
intensifying the pressure on IT organizations to “do more with less.”
However, as IT leaders face a daunting challenge to support mainframe
skills from increased market demand, the industry must decide on one of
two options: 1) scale back on their use of the mainframe, thereby
forfeiting its unmatched capabilities, or 2) undertake extraordinary
measures to acquire and maintain requisite levels of in-house mainframe
expertise.
A CA
survey of Fortune 2000 companies around the world shows that
enterprise IT organizations are losing their experienced mainframe
personnel to retirement just as their use of the mainframe is projected
to grow significantly.
Mainframe 2.0 enables a new generation of IT professionals to
effectively and efficiently manage increasingly complex mainframe
environments. It also benefits experienced mainframe managers by
significantly enhancing their productivity and automating many routine
tasks.
Mainframe Revival
Evidence of the mainframe’s ongoing primacy and strategic resurgence
abounds. About 70% of organizations and governments are running critical
applications on mainframes. Total installed mainframe capacity has
reached 14 million MIPS worldwide—from a base of 4.5 million MIPS in
2001. IBM customers also are adopting its most recent platform
innovations more rapidly than ever before. Market research indicates
that uptake of the current z10 series of mainframe processors reached
approximately 720,000 MIPS within the first 130 days of availability.
According to IDC's high-end server quarterly tracker, the adoption of
IBM mainframes, which power the top 50 banks worldwide and 22 of the top
25 US retailers, has enabled IBM's System z to nearly double its share
this decade.*
Many IT organizations are also moving workloads to the mainframe because
they can no longer cost-justify the major build-outs of data center
facilities that would be required to expand their computing capacity
with distributed systems.
As the world’s leading independent provider of mainframe management
solutions, CA is uniquely able to provide enterprise IT organizations
with the technology and expertise they require to take advantage of the
mainframe’s power and efficiency.
Mainframe 2.0 Deliverables
CA’s initial set of Mainframe 2.0 deliverables will include the
availability of CA’s new electronic delivery capability for its software
solutions. This will streamline software implementation by building on
standard z/OS-provided tools such as SMP/E and helping to eliminate the
need for a customer to reconstitute tape volumes after downloading the
product.
In tackling the complexity of mainframe management as a whole, CA’s
Mainframe 2.0 is taking a unified approach to a set of diverse software
design, development, installation, and integration challenges in a
comprehensive manner.
CA also is working with its business partners to embrace elements of
Mainframe 2.0.
Customer Quotes
“One of the greatest concerns for people in our organization is how to
preserve the technical knowledge necessary to keep their
mission-critical systems operating at required service levels as key
personnel reach retirement age. CA's Mainframe 2.0 initiative addresses
this concern by ensuring that these systems can still be properly
maintained and tuned even when those key personnel are gone." Dick
Millar, president, MidAtlantic Datacom User Group
“Because the mainframe offers such outstanding economies of scale, it
will remain central to our members' near- and long-term IT strategies
for the foreseeable future. CA mainframe management solutions are
also central to their strategies, because they enable IT organizations
to drive down mainframe TCO and to maximize the business value they can
realize from their mainframe investments.” Kevin Grimes, president,
Southeastern User Group for Endevor
“A concern echoed by our user community is the complexity and cost of
bringing new resources to work on mainframe products. CA's Mainframe 2.0
initiative directly addresses the issues of complexity and cost by
simplifying, streamlining, and standardizing the product installation
and configuration process. Mainframe 2.0 will allow our user community
to leverage new resources to participate in mainframe product
administration and free senior technical staff to focus on how to use
technology to benefit the business.” Terry Schwartz, chairman, CA IDMS
PLC
“Mainframe 2.0 underscores CA’s commitment to the mainframe, addressing
the future of the platform and the aging workforce that currently
supports it. We're very excited about this new initiative.” Ingrid
Lohneiss, president, CA Identity & Access Management for Mainframe
Global User Community
Business Partner Quotes
“Our mainframe customers face many of the same challenges
and opportunities that CA is targeting with its Mainframe 2.0
initiative. We applaud CA on this initiative and look forward to working
closely with them and their other partners to ensure software solutions
for z/OS and Linux on System z are easier to use and more
cost-effective—in addition to being reliable, scalable, and secure.”
Thomas J. Meehan, INNOVATION Data Processing, vice president, advance
technology
“Chicago-Soft is participating in CA's Mainframe 2.0 initiative to help
our shared customers get maximum value out of their mainframe
investments even as staffing constraints become increasingly
problematic. With support for more than 135 CA solutions, our
MVS/Quick-Ref product will be especially useful for IT organizations
seeking to make mainframe ownership as cost-effective as possible.”
Peter McLaughlin, president and co- founder, Chicago-Soft, Ltd.
Analyst Quotes
“Mainframe 2.0 is a forward-thinking response to the evolution of the
mainframe—which, despite predictions to the contrary, is now and will
remain an integral component of enterprise computing into the future. By
focusing on key aspects of mainframe ownership, such as software
implementation and ease-of-use, CA is helping customers optimize
the business value of their investments in IBM's z series machines.”
Rich Ptak, managing partner, Ptak, Noel & Associates
“The graying of the mainframe workforce may be the most critical issue
facing mainframe owners since Y2K. With Mainframe 2.0, CA is offering
customers a practical approach to addressing this issue.” Clay Ryder,
president, The Sageza Group
“The fact that a skills shortage for mainframe systems management talent
is the most pressing issue related to the platform is a testimony to the
technical strength and business value of the platform itself. The
mainframe is an industry benchmark for performance, security,
reliability, and availability and has already demonstrated its
flexibility as the platform adapted to serve new internet related
business needs in the last decade. It remains a cost-effective data
center platform with strong performance in relation to energy and
resource consumption which places it in good stead as CIOs look to
maximize computing productivity and processor performance per watt. CA’s
Mainframe 2.0 initiative provides the innovative cradle-to-cradle
systems management approach that should further elevate the platform’s
business value.” Simon Perry, principal associate analyst –
sustainability, Quocirca Ltd
“There are two fundamental facts of life now facing enterprise users of
mainframes. One is that its skilled workforce is dwindling and the
effects are really starting to be felt now. The other is that the world
the mainframe inhabits has changed significantly and if users do
nothing, it will be left in a backwater. Both of these problems can be
solved if users grasp the nettle of change, which need not be
frightening if they work with a partner capable of implementing and
managing that change. With Mainframe 2.0, CA has both the tools and
expertise to get mainframe systems past these problems and moved center
stage in the modern IT world. It is fundamentally important that
dwindling skills availability is met with tools that help automate
mainframe operations and make their management much more analogous to
other systems in the IT mix. It is also crucial that the mainframe, as
the repository of much of an enterprise’s business critical data, can
now play an equal part in Service Oriented Architectures and Web
services where its data management and processing resources can add real
business management muscle to the flexibility and agility these
technologies now bring to the party.” Martin Banks, practice leader,
data center and mainframe, Bloor Research
About CA
CA (NASDAQ: CA) is the world's leading independent IT management
software company. With CA's Enterprise IT Management (EITM) vision and
expertise, organizations can more effectively govern, manage and secure
IT to optimize business performance and sustain competitive advantage.
For more information, visit www.ca.com
Footnote
* According to IDC's high-end +$250K servers quarterly tracker results
from 3Q 2000 to 2Q 2008. IDC 2Q08 WW Server Tracker.
Subscribe to CA
Trademarks
Copyright © 2008 CA. All Rights Reserved. One CA Plaza, Islandia, N.Y.
11749. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced
herein belong to their respective companies. IBM, System z and z/OS are
trademarks or registered trademarks of IBM Corporation in the United
States and other countries. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus
Torvalds in the United States, other countries, or both.
MULTIMEDIA GALLERY http://www.businesswire.com/cgi-bin/mmg.cgi?eid=5834764
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