CA World 2011: CA launches real-time IT service health tool

Continuing the theme of bridging the gap between IT and business, CA today unveiled a new management tool designed to provide better insight into how tech services affect corporate functions.

The new tool, dubbed CA Executive Insight for Service Assurance, was launched at the company's user conference, CA World 2011, in Las Vegas.

All of this helps our customers remain in control of the new and increasingly heterogeneous IT environments.

The offering will be available on a wide range of mobile devices, including the iPhone and iPad, and will transform the way IT talks to and interacts with the business, according to Mike Sargent, general manager of CA Technologies' service assurance arm.

"As customers wrestle with increasing complexity... we've invested in bringing a series of capabilities together that links services, transactions and applications to the underlying infrastructure," he said.

"All of this helps our customers remain in control of the new and increasingly heterogeneous IT environments [they're in charge of]."

In addition to real-time metrics and mobile support, Executive Insight includes interactive dashboards and the ability to annotate data to add clarity and context and further aid decision making.

With greater visibility and insight of how IT functions and services impact on the business, executives can quickly and easily make decisions that add value and reduce risks, according to CA.

"It's not just being fast, but being fast while changing and maintaining control," Sargent said.

"Throughout it all, IT is being challenged to do things better, faster and cheaper."

Rather than simply trying to do more with less, the Executive Insight tool will help IT do what "matters most to the business," according to Sargent, who added this will be possible through a language the business understands and relates to.

"It allows the business user to pick from a variety of metrics," he said.

"It is really an array of data that is highly relevant to that business user and their peers. So they can very quickly spot the information and collaborate."