Computer Associates unveils roadmaps at Sterling Days

With the addition of Sterling Software`s wide range of enterprise software products to its existing offerings, Computer Associates (CA) is confident that it has the definitive software solution for the enterprise in the eBusiness era. At CA`s Sterling Days held in Cape Town on the 5th and in Johannesburg on the 7th of September, CA revealed roadmaps that demonstrate a tight integration of Sterling`s offerings with its own to deliver true end-to-end eBusiness capabilities from a single vendor.

"The recent acquisition of Sterling Software fulfils a strategic purpose for CA, tying in with its eBusiness strategy. The combination of the product offerings of these two companies puts CA in a unique position to deliver a total eBusiness solutions from under a single roof," says Dan van der Westhuizen, senior vice president for Computer Associates Africa and Middle East.

According to Raoul Hunter, manager: new business development for CA Africa, CA and Sterling have been playing in much the same arena for some time but with very little overlap - "Hence the acquisition of Sterling to complete CA `s offering was almost an inevitable step," he declares.

"The combination of CA and Sterling products make one of the strongest and most compelling Business Intelligence suites in the market," he says.

Key to CA`s eBusiness strategy is its Jasmineii platform technology. "With the addition of the Eureka products from Sterling, Jasmineii is able to integrate everything within the enterprise and make it available for review through a single portal. The immense value of this is that legacy data residing on mainframes can be accessed and applied to the eBusiness - an unprecedented development," enthuses Hunter. He adds that leveraging this data is critical - but doing so has got to be a simple task. "With the Jasmineii eBusiness platform, the technology is concealed behind an easy to use GUI. The technology is thus no barrier to the operator," he says.

CA`s patented Neugents, or neural network technology, further adds a competitive edge to the eBusiness by doing the thinking for the enterprise - "Neugents give answers unlike any other form of Artificial Intelligence that exist today," says Hunter.

Hunter notes that storage is a crucial aspect of eBusiness. "CA now boasts the most complete storage portfolio with the addition of Sterling`s SOLVE and SAMS product families and the best of breed Alexandria Unix solution," he says. CA`s offering in this department now consists of the recently released ARCserve 2000 for serverless backups and Alexandria V5 expected in the fourth quarter of this year (which will bring centralised policy management to the solution). New products to be released include CA Disk that will include interoperability with IBM Shark enterprise storage solutions as well as cross platform functionality.

Sterling`s Network Management suite is to be integrated into CA`s NetworkIT to deliver NetworkIT Enterprise - a total solution comprised of all the outstanding features from each product line to deliver a pre-eminent solution.

Sterling is widely renowned for its COOL: suite of application modelling products. CA recognises the value of these popular tools for eBusiness application and will continue to develop them. According to Charles Flee, business technologist at CA Africa, notable additions to the capability of the COOL: offering includes wireless application development and complete integration with Jasmineii.

"Throughout the integration of Sterling products with those of CA, integration and interoperability will be a core theme," says van der Westhuizen, noting in conclusion that all the products will tie in with CA`s flagship enterprise management framework, Unicenter TNG, and Jasmineii, the eBusiness platform.