CA Technologies Helps Keep the Peace Among IT Platforms

Eight Critical Forces Shaping Data Center Strategy

One of the fiercest rivalries among internal IT teams is the war for control over workloads between the teams that manage distributed systems and the mainframe. For the past couple of decades, supporters of distributed systems have had the better side of that argument.

But recent adjustments to the way IBM charges organizations for running certain classes of workload on the mainframe have made the mainframe a much more attractive option for running workloads on Linux, for example. Given the fact that IBM charges mainframe customers based on peak workloads, many of those Linux workloads eat up excess mainframe capacity at an almost negligible additional cost.

To help IT organizations take a lot of the partisan politics out of the debate over which workloads should run where, CA Technologies this week released a new version of CA Workload Automation iDash analytics tools that runs across both the mainframe and distributed systems.

Michael Madden, general manager for mainframe customer solutions at CA Technologies, says CA Workload Automation iDash gives IT organizations an analytics tool that will allow them to make more impartial decisions about what types of workloads should be run on what type of platform. Rather than having internal IT teams making spurious arguments about the merits of one platform over another, Madden says CA Workload Automation iDash provides empirical evidence by applying predictive analytics to determine what platform to use based on what’s best for the business rather than what may be best for IT.

Despite their external demeanor, IT staff can be a passionate bunch when it comes to platforms. Rather than letting those passions get the better of the organization, the time has come to apply a more scientific method to resolve the great IT platform debate.