CA Adds Configuration Management Database

CA on Wednesday introduced its first commercial configuration management database that will include recently acquired automated dependency mapping technology that correlates IT assets with business services.

The CMDB can consolidate and reconcile information about an IT environment within a common view, providing greater management control over IT processes. The "common view" enables improvement over a wide range of IT operations, from change, incident, and problem management to availability and capacity management, says Arlen Beylerian, director of product management for CA.

"It's more than a database," he says. "It's an application that allows you to manage all those relationships we've struggled with over the years in IT. We've had custom deployments of CMDBs for many years, and now we can provide a complete solution with the functionality customers have been looking for."

The database can help companies more quickly implement the IT best practices included in the IT Information Library, which is being adopted by more IT organizations, and can help tech managers better meet service-level commitments, he says.

The CA CMDB includes more than 70 relationship templates, 140 predefined configuration item groups, and multiple adapters for integrating the collected information. The product enables organizations to collect, manage, and maintain a single view of configuration data from CA, third-party IT management applications, or internally developed applications.

It integrates with other CA management products, including the recently introduced Unicenter Network and Systems Management, Service Desk, Asset Management, and Asset Portfolio Management.

Earlier this month, CA acquired Cendura, a provider of life-cycle data center automation products, specifically to integrate its automated dependency mapping technology. The mapping capability enables automatic discovery and population of the CMDB with configuration data and shows the relationships between the data. It can detect changes over time and update the CMDB.

The CMDB is the centerpiece of the CA Service Management Accelerator, a broad set of products intended to enable the automation of ITIL processes.