CA-Sponsored Global Study Finds Data Center Automation to Become Increasingly Significant...

CA-Sponsored Global Study Finds Data Center Automation to Become Increasingly Significant over Next Two Years

Companies Aim to Increase Uptime/Business Continuity, Performance
Management, and Enable Dynamic Response to Changes in Business Demands
LAS VEGAS--(Business Wire)--
While data center automation already plays a significant role in
IT organizations' efforts to link services with business priorities
and objectives, the role of automation will become increasingly more
significant over the next one to two years. This is the key finding of
a recent independent study sponsored by CA.

Similar to the global virtualization management study CA announced
February 11, 2008, this study surveyed 300 CIOs and other top IT
executives at companies in the U.S., EMEA and APAC with more than $250
million in annual revenue. It found the top three goals companies are
hoping to achieve with data center automation efforts are
uptime/business continuity, performance management, and enabling
dynamic response to changes in business demands. It also revealed a
significantly higher percentage of U.S. respondents (40%) identify
compliance and audit as a top goal compared to those in EMEA (24%) and
APAC (19%).

"IT leaders know they must improve their levels of insight and
automation in order to optimize business service delivery and gain
competitive advantage," said Paula Daley, vice president of product
marketing for CA. "Data center automation enables IT to move beyond
software provisioning and job scheduling to help deliver true
enterprise agility--ensuring that the IT infrastructure is responsive
and scalable to the dynamics of real-time business."

The most important benefits of automation, according to the
respondents, are achieving greater operational
efficiency/productivity, improved service level availability, the
ability to deliver IT services based on business priorities, higher
availability and a reduction in human error.

The respondents also noted that virtualization and server
consolidation are driving data center automation efforts. Hiring and
retaining the right people with the right skills is also among the top
strategies companies will count on to help their IT organizations
achieve objectives this year.

"By optimizing the utilization of servers, data center automation
enables IT to put Green IT initiatives into practice by managing
virtualization, server consolidation, power conservation and
provisioning," added Daley.

Best practice frameworks continue to be a driver for automation.
Fifty-one percent of respondents in the U.S. indicated that ITIL is
driving the need for automation in the data center; this compares to
48% in EMEA and 38% in APAC.

One-third of respondents worldwide are currently using business
intelligence to govern the automation of IT processes. This percentage
is highest in APAC (48%), followed by EMEA (38%) and the U.S. (13%).
The likelihood of using business intelligence to govern the automation
of IT processes worldwide is expected to grow over the next three
years.

An executive summary of the survey and the full results are
available at http://www.ca.com/dca/survey.

About CA

CA (NYSE: CA), one of the world's largest independent software
companies, provides software solutions to unify and simplify(TM) IT
management. With CA's Enterprise IT Management (EITM) vision and
expertise, organizations can more effectively govern, manage and
secure IT to optimize business performance and sustain competitive
advantage. Founded in 1976, CA serves customers in virtually every
country in the world. For more information, please visit www.ca.com.

Copyright (C) 2008 CA. All Rights Reserved. All trademarks, trade
names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their
respective companies. ITIL(R) is a Registered Trade Mark, and a
Registered Community Trade Mark of the Office of Government Commerce,
and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

CA
David Resnic, 508-628-8426
david.resnic@ca.com

Copyright Business Wire 2008