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    Application Deployment in the New Virtual World

    In not-too-distant future, the vast majority of enterprise applications is going to be composite in nature. We already see this on the Web where the concept of borderless applicationsis already generally well understood. Of course, there’s nothing especially new about the concept of composite applications, but building them has been something of a challenge for most IT organizations.

    Against that backdrop, it was interesting to see CA Technologies move to acquire ITKO, a provider of a set of tools that simplifies the testing of a suite of distributed application components within a virtual environment, for $330 million.

    As we continue to witness, for example, the convergence of mainframe and distributed computing platforms, it’s becoming clear that just about every application is going to have components running on multiple platforms. In the future, Mike Sargent, senior vice president of marketing and operations for CA Technologies, notes that virtualization technologies such as ITKO’s LISA platform will change the way applications are developed and eventually deployed, which Sargent notes is already leading to a blurring of the line between application development and IT operations.

    In order to deal with that convergence of “DevOps” while also trying to keep pace with developers using agile development methodologies, Sargent says it’s becoming clear that IT organizations are going to need tools that allow them to effectively model the application environment before the applications are actually deployed. Once that environment is in place, not only will it be easier to build, deploy and maintain distributed applications, IT organizations will be able to model the business services that run across those applications, says Sargent.

    As enterprise IT continues to mature, IT organizations are slowly but surely acquiring tools that will allow them to manage the complexity of IT at much higher levels of abstraction. Otherwise, the way IT organizations currently manage the build and deployment of enterprise applications is never going to cost-effectively scale into the future.
     

    Mike Vizard
    Mike Vizard
    Michael Vizard is a seasoned IT journalist, with nearly 30 years of experience writing and editing about enterprise IT issues. He is a contributor to publications including Programmableweb, IT Business Edge, CIOinsight and UBM Tech. He formerly was editorial director for Ziff-Davis Enterprise, where he launched the company’s custom content division, and has also served as editor in chief for CRN and InfoWorld. He also has held editorial positions at PC Week, Computerworld and Digital Review.

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