CA pings in Sonar for asset management

Computer Associates (CA) has unveiled no less than nine products including a key new software technology at its CA World conference in Las Vegas.

Clarifying the firm's strategy for on-demand computing and web services, the day saw five new Unicenter and eTrust products launched under its web services umbrella and four products that fit into its on-demand computing drive, including the day's chief attraction, Sonar.

In its simplest form, Sonar is an intelligent asset management tool, but CA chief executive and chairman Sanjay Kumar and Yogesh Gupta, chief technology officer, were keen to stress its versatility.

They said that the software could also be used to analyse a network, assess the impact any failure would have and pinpoint security issues and their causes.

"On-demand computing has tremendous promises," said Gupta. "The question is, how do you get the promised benefits from the infrastructure? We believe that the key is management."

Sonar is not a stand-alone product, but software integrated within other CA technologies, including BrightStor Process Automation Manager, eTrust Vulnerability Manager, Unicenter NSM option for VMware software, and Unicenter NSM Dynamic Reconfiguration Option, all detailed at CA World.

With web services CA has taken a two-part approach. For those using a third-party web service, it has developed Unicenter WSDM, which will monitor the service and ensure that service levels are being met.

Those running their own web services will be able to choose from different Unicenter products: Management for WebSphere 3.5, Unicenter Management for WebLogic 3.5, Management for .Net framework 3.0, plus eTrust Directory 4.1.

Don LeClair, vice president at the office of the chief technology officer, said: "Companies increasingly use web services to assemble information from disparate sources and package it up.

"But part of what they deliver isn't under their control. They can't put a management tool into the host, so this manages above where the services are hosted."

Later today [Tuesday], CA is expected to release two key security products under the eTrust brand - Vulnerability Manager and Security Command Center.

The firm will describe how Security Command Center runs centrally and provides the means to pull information in from technologies, such as firewalls and intrusion detection, on a system.