On 11 January 2010, CA acquired privately held Oblicore, which provides IT service portfolio management (ITSPM) , IT service catalog and service-level reporting software for enterprises and service providers. Oblicore has an installed base of 110 customers and employs 50 people worldwide. Terms of the deal were not disclosed

CA has a well-thought-out vision for IITSPM capabilities, which span a number of product areas, including the successful CA Clarity PPM and CA Service Desk products. But the heavy professional services requirement associated with CA Service Catalog and CA Service Assure (both from CA's former ICAN-SP subsidiary), as well as the immaturity of this market in general, has limited their deployment in production and hampered CA's execution on this vision.

Stronger capabilities from Oblicore will likely replace the underperforming CA Service Assure product. CA has no plans to discontinue its CA Service Catalog product and will need to rationalize Oblicore's overlapping service catalog construct. Oblicore starts with service-level contract terms and links them down to infrastructure, application and service desk metrics that can be measured to show that service levels are achieved. Oblicore Guarantee has strong reporting and dashboard capabilities and an easy-to-use utility to construct and visualize SLA-to-operational-level-agreement (OLA) dependencies. However, it lacks the ability to take requests for services in its catalog and does not handle service fulfillment workflow automation. CA Service Catalog provides these functions, but is not linked to Oblicore's service-level reporting, which CA must address in its product road map.

Oblicore will be housed in CA's new cloud organization, but will be marketed as part of CA’s Service Management solutions. Although Oblicore products can be used to compare and contrast alternative delivery models (including cloud), as well as monitor service levels delivered by cloud services, it would be a mistake for CA to limit the focus to cloud management. ITSPM is still an early-stage, immature market. ITIL v.3 has increased IT organizations' awareness and exploration of the value of an IT service catalog. Nonetheless, continuing market education and evangelism are required, and the Oblicore products may not receive enough attention if they become too narrowly focused on cloud computing.

Oblicore customers: Expect CA to continue developing and advancing Guarantee's service-level reporting functionality; however, watch for changes in Guarantee's service catalog construct as CA integrates or federates it with CA Service Catalog. Monitor CA's progress in integrating service-level reporting and service catalog functionality from separate products based on different architectures to ensure that it will not require entering service definitions in two places.

CA Service Assure customers: Prepare for this product to be transitioned to the stronger Oblicore capabilities.

Enterprises investigating IT service catalog and service-level reporting products: Include CA on your shortlist, along with competitive alternatives such as Compuware Proxima, Digital Fuel and Novell Managed Objects. If service request management and service fulfillment workflow automation is also required, Oblicore is not in contention; instead, investigate CA Service Catalog and competitive alternatives from BMC Software, HP, newScale and PMG .

"Document the IT Service Portfolio Before Creating the IT Service Catalog"— In their quest for operational excellence, IT operations groups must plan to define an IT service portfolio and IT service catalog. By Debra Curtis and Kris Brittain

"Top 10 Evaluation Criteria for IT Service Portfolio Management Products and Vendors"— Selecting a tool to manage the IT service portfolio and decomposing services into a catalog of standard, repeatable offerings can be an evaluation challenge. By Debra Curtis and Kris Brittain

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