At the CA World 2016 conference today, CA Technologies continued to zero in on optimizing DevOps across both distributed and mainframe systems, including for the first time making use of machine learning algorithms to predict systems issues that will affect mainframe application performance before they occur.
Ayman Sayed, chief product officer for CA Technologies, says the emergence of an app economy driven by application programming interfaces (APIs) is challenging DevOps across both distributed and mainframe computing environments. Via a series of on-premises and cloud application services, Sayed says CA Technologies is attempting to help customers work their way through all the technical and cultural changes required.
For example, CA Technologies released an update to CA Agile Central, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application that makes it easier for IT teams to collaborate with one another. New capabilities include Personal Navigation and Quick Details modules aimed at enhancing the productivity of individual members of the IT team.
At the same time, CA Technologies released updates to its CA Application Performance Management (CA APM) tools that now include extensions that add support for Docker containers, Nginix load balancing software and RabbitMQ messaging software. Also on tap is integration between CA APM and the BlazeMeter testing software it acquired earlier this year that is delivered as a cloud service along with integrations between CA Performance Management software and the CA Virtual Network Assurance tools that CA Technologies developed to simplify the management of multiple software-defined networking (SDN) environments.
On the IT security front, meanwhile, CA Technologies unveiled a threat analytics module for CA Privileged Access Manager (PAM) that makes use of machine learning to identify threats, as well as CA Identity Service, a new, turn-key identity-as-a-service offering.
Finally, in addition to taking advantage of machine learning algorithms to improve mainframe application performance, CA Technologies added workload automation tools alongside a cloud service that manages data preparation and conversion as IT organizations embrace new types of data in mainframe environments.
In general, Sayed says there’s a huge need to rapidly transform almost every aspect of IT operations.
“Organizations clearly need to automate both DevOps and security,” says Sayed.
Accomplishing those goals, however, is a lot easier said than done unless IT organizations have the tools required to make that transition possible in the first place.
