Online IT games challenge players to showcase their project and portfolio management skills and network management know-how. Can you compete?

By Denise Dubie

IT professionals aren’t all about business. Many enjoy some friendly competition in the form of online gaming. Two such free online games challenge players to put their IT-specific skills to work in winning them PPM Hero or Network Rockstar status.

PPM Hero, created by CA Technologies in association with The Burton Group, asks players to answer questions on three floors (or game levels) to eventually achieve the status of PPM hero. Using project and portfolio management expertise, players would advance through the levels dubbed Information Technology, Business Operations and The Executive Offices.

The game offers some bonus features as well as some potential pitfalls. For instance, answering questions marked “Q” will give players the opportunity to boost their budget. Yet every wrong response takes budget dollars away and the more time you take the more likely the cash reserves will continue to shrink. Red “Project Police” could cause issues completing tasks, but blue shields can protect against the potential danger the police present.

Successful players that reach PPM Hero status can then challenge friends and submit their own questions for future gamers. IT professionals looking to increase their skills for the game could check out CA Technologies’ PPM blog and the company’s IT governance blog.

And if you’d rather get down and dirty with network know-how, don’t forget to test your network management skills with a game created by NetQoS (acquired by CA Technologies). In the Network Rockstar Challenge players are asked tons of technical trivia only those proficient in network technology could know.

Network Rockstar players choose an online persona and fielding questions through several rounds. The more rounds completed, the higher the status of the character. The game quizzes players on their high-tech knowledge with questions ranging from what does the acronym ATM stand for to what is the speed of an OC-3 network line. Players nailing seven out of 10 questions successfully earn the right to go on tour. Those that fall short get bounced to the alley.

Know any online games that test IT skills? Please share them with me by leaving a comment here or e-mail me the information directly at Denise.Dubie@ca.com.

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Enterprise Management Associates’ Radar report for Application-Aware Network Performance Management names CA Technologies and OPNET Technologies as value leaders.

By Denise Dubie

CA Technologies can attribute its acquisition of NetQoS for its high rank on Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) recent Radar report that analyzed some 20 vendors and their Application-Aware Network Performance Management (ANPM) product capabilities.

How savvy network management optimizes application performance

CA Technologies certainly isn’t shy about shopping for technology -- the vendor since the beginning of 2009 alone has acquired 3Tera, Cassatt, NetQoS, Nimsoft and Oblicore. And recent research shows that the company is also pretty savvy when it comes to picking companies and products that will best round out its technology portfolio.

In the case of NetQoS, CA Technologies invested $200 million in 2009 to acquire the Austin-based network performance management vendor and is already seeing the fruits of that acquisition by way of industry recognition for its technology capabilities. Combining the NetQoS portfolio with products acquired years ago with Concord Communications, namely eHealth, CA Technologies caught the attention of Jim Frey, research director at EMA, author of the recent EMA Radar report on ANPM products.

Continue reading "NetQoS buy lands CA Technologies in ‘value leader’ position" »

Enterprise Management Associates’ Radar report for Application-Aware Network Performance Management proves the importance of network health for optimized application performance.

By Denise Dubie

Network management is considered a mature IT discipline, yet recent research proves that even advanced practices can be updated when technology and business needs demand it.

Take application-aware network performance management, for example. Bringing together network performance data with metrics on applications and services running across the environment will help high-tech managers deliver an optimized IT end-user experience, according to Enterprise Management Associates (EMA).

CA Technologies earns BSM nod from EMA

“Application-aware network performance management (ANPM) in our Radar report is looking at tools that are doing performance management by monitoring the network and in doing so the tools are also revealing application details and services that are active, who’s using them and how often, what’s the responsiveness and the quality of experience,” says Jim Frey, research director at EMA.

The EMA Radar for Application-Aware Network Performance Management Q3 2010 Summary details the four key mechanisms used by vendors in tools designed to provide application awareness in a network management product. To start, tools should include packet inspection capabilities. This “technique delivers application visibility by looking into packet headers as well as deeper packet contents in order to recognize and monitor application and service use by user,” according to the report.

Continue reading "How savvy network management optimizes application performance" »

Infrastructure and application data is required to provide the business with IT service assurance.

By Denise Dubie

Data doesn’t mean much if it isn’t put to proper use. High-tech leaders hoping to help their companies achieve the nirvana of business-IT alignment must learn where to find and how to best use infrastructure and application performance metrics to deliver true IT service assurance.

Poor application performance cuts into business’ bottom line

According to a recent IDG Research Services survey, 75% of U.S. organizations polled consider IT-business alignment a “primary concern.” Yet 35% of those organizations also report having difficulty tying business goals to IT. And 31% reported that they had insufficient monitoring and management capabilities, according to the report “The value of performance metrics in managing IT service,” developed by Network World Custom Solutions Group for CA Technologies.

Continue reading "Performance anxiety: Gathering the right metrics to manage IT services" »

CA Technologies shares at Cisco Live how its software can enable network engineers to guarantee application delivery and manage data center performance.

By Denise Dubie

Cisco Live attendees will hear about more than just the network giant’s tablet product plans. The Las Vegas show also gives Cisco partners the opportunity to showcase how their wares can monitor, manage and optimize Cisco environments.

Application performance management, network engineers and Cisco Live

On the heels of Cisco’s introduction of its Cius tablet, CA Technologies will be presenting to IT and network professionals at Cisco Live on how they can better manage virtual machines, ensure optimal application delivery and take on performance management in Cisco data centers.

Continue reading "How to make the most of your Cisco environment" »

Enterprise Management Associates breaks down the state of BSM understanding and adoption in 2010.

By Denise Dubie

Enterprise IT leaders today realize to be effective their organizations' work needs to be directly tied to the business -- beyond alignment toward total synchronization.

And as vendors work to deliver technologies that fit into buckets of products defined by various IT industry watchers, it remains to be seen if enterprise IT leaders identify the technologies with the market terms. Recent research shows that the promise of one technology-business partnership represents a transformation to many in IT, but unfortunately fewer have made the progress needed to reach their goals.

During a webinar this week, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) shared details on data (to be continued in future webinars) that sheds some light on just how well enterprise IT understands the technologies associated with business service management and how far along they have implemented product and processes to support BSM initiatives.

BSM isn’t a new concept. (Just to give you an example of how long the term has been bandied about, in 2004 I wrote a buzz-y article for Network World on the emerging technology concept.) Yet according to findings revealed by EMA’s Dennis Drogseth, vice president of research, the majority of 160 respondents are not in “First-Phase Deployment” of their BSM implementation.

Continue reading "Are IT leaders betting on business service management?" »

Going to Cisco Live? Check out these sessions on how to guarantee optimized services in virtual environments.

By Denise Dubie

Network managers in the know realize they must master the art of optimized application performance just as they conquered Cisco router configuration. The application performance related job duty fell in the laps of network gurus years ago when it became clear that the network wasn’t always to blame for poor application performance -- but that network engineers possibly held the best perspective on how to optimize bandwidth and other network resources to ensure business-critical apps performed as expected.

Poor application performance to blame for lost productivity, increased costs

Next week at Cisco Live attendees will get a chance to learn more about how to manage application performance from the network perspective.

Continue reading "Application performance, network engineers and Cisco Live" »

IT infrastructure and operations professionals polled at CA Technologies’ Interactive IT Executive Forum reveal lost employee productivity and increased IT costs due to end-user problems with online applications.

By Denise Dubie

IT professionals realize poor application performance can hurt customer satisfaction and ultimately the business, but recent poll results show that applications not behaving as expected can drive down employee productivity and do damage to IT department budgets by increasing the costs of solving problems.

Uncertain economic times drive strategic IT investments

According to a poll taken during the multi-city event, CA Technologies’ Interactive IT Executive Forum, more than half of approximately 400 IT professionals in attendance experienced in the past 18 months a “loss of employee productivity due to downtime/poor performance.” About 23% said “escalating costs of resulting issues and problems” could also be attributed to end-user problems with online applications, and nearly 12% felt their company had suffered some damage to the brand/company reputation. More than 10% reported drops in revenue and more than 4% said that they experienced high levels of customer churn.

Continue reading "Poor application performance to blame for lost productivity, increased costs" »

In another time, an acquisition by CA Technologies (back when it was Computer Associates) caused industry watchers to speculate about the company’s motives and its technologies’ future development. In 2010, the high-tech industry gets why CA Technologies completed the purchases of technology providers NetQoS, Oblicore, Cassatt, Nimsoft and 3tera. The company is building a technology portfolio that can manage the network, application and server foundation as well as control IT services into the cloud.

Forbes.com Friday published an article entitled “What cloud computing means” and with it, named 10 companies as “cloud leaders.” CA Technologies landed on that list alongside industry giants such as Microsoft, Google, VMware and Salesforce. (Remaining five companies are: Amazon Web Services, IBM, Rackspace, Terremark and RightScale.) CA Technologies is quoted in the article’s slideshow as recently buying “its way to the forefront of cloud computing with the acquisitions of 3tera, Cassatt, NetQoS and Oblicore, each of which had technology for managing a different aspect of the cloud environment.”

For industry watchers, the acquisition of 3Tera earlier this year solidified CA Technologies’ intent to be a competitor in the cloud market. The company had pointed to cloud computing motivations with previous acquisitions, but 3Tera had the technology that proved to market analysts that CA Technologies has a solid strategy to take on cloud computing and help its customers do the same. According to the Forbes.com report, “the AppLogic tools created by 3tera are used by hosting companies to configure and manage multiple servers that must work together to support a cloud application.” And for Forrester Research Principal Analyst James Staten, the buy marked CA Technologies serious entry into the cloud space.

“If anyone doubted CA Inc.’s intention to get into the cloud computing market, you can’t get away with that skepticism anymore. This company is serious. Its acquisition of early cloud leader 3Tera takes their nascent cloud entreaties to an entirely new level,” reads a blog post from Staten and Forrester colleague senior analyst Glenn O’Donnell from February 2010. “3Tera was one of the poster children of the emerging Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) market when its AppLogic platform was deployed across a collection of service providers as the basis for their cloud solutions. The company since has grown this into a network of more than 30 service providers across the globe, and a small collection of enterprises who use its software to power their clouds. As a cloud infrastructure platform, that’s a substantial lead-in market penetration compared to the other favorites such as Eucalyptus, Enomaly and of course, VMware vCloud Express.”

Now as CA Technologies continues to build on its cloud strategy with products announced at last month’s CA World 2010 conference and updated partnerships with fellow vendors and cloud enthusiasts, the market it watching to see what’s next.

“But this isn’t simply a market acquisition for CA. It’s a foundational move that it can now integrate with other CA products and technologies including Spectrum Automation Manager, its server provisioning and management product, its IT service catalog and its application performance management suite to give service providers a strong set of end customer tools for managing their cloud (and traditional hosting) deployments,” the Forrester Research blog goes on to say.

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The CA Service Assurance business unit found an interesting way to let customers at CA World '10 know that CA Technologies will let customers adopt new products and migrate to cloud computing, for instance, their way.

Corporate Vice President and General Manager Cliff Meltzer commandeered the piano while CA Technologies' Jeff Cobb belted out the lyrics to Frank Sinatra's "My Way." The opening to the service assurance keynote caught some attendess off-guard, but by delivering an off-beat performance, the CA service assurance team also got the message across: CA Technologies will work with customers to help them manage service quality and delivery, well, their way.

"We have a rock solid vision to partner with and help guide our customers into the future," Meltzer told attendees, after explaining that he played a bit of piano before logging time at IT vendors such as Cisco and Apple. Meltzer explained to the audience that CA Service Assurance offered deep expertise, highly reliable and scalable products as well as a practical approach to innovation.

"Our job is to deliver dynamic management capabilities" to offer customers the flexibility they need to deploy the best solution for their requirements, he said.

CA Technologies today announced the CA Service Assurance portfolio and strategy at the show. The product portfolio brings together NetQoS technologies with eHealth and Spectrum capabilities via integration capabilities made possible by the company's Catalyst Program, which is said to help customers manage the myriad technologies from the company and its partners.

Meltzer also explained that CA Technologies, even with introducing this new portfolio, realizes it needs to offer customers a simplified managment portfolio, with streamlined packaging and pricing. With many IT shops depending upon multiple management tools from several vendors, he said it is critical for the team behind CA Service Assurance to minimize the complexity.

"Our job is to make it easier to understand what we have to offer and how you can deploy it," Meltzer said.

Posted by Denise Dubie

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