HP Takes on Change Management

By Alex Handy

June 17, 2008 —  Hewlett-Packard says that IT organizations fear change. More specifically, they fear change management. For that reason, HP introduced today a host of updates for its business technology optimization solutions. Chief among these are the numerous pieces of software used to track change and configuration through enterprise application life cycles.

These updates integrated change management more deeply into the company's business technology products. HP also announced that many of these services and solutions will also be offered as software as a service later this summer.

HP Release Control 4.0 leads this list of updated solutions. The software tracks changes and communications with in an IT infrastructure around those changes. HP has added integrations between Release Control and its Server Automation and Network Automation products, allowing the various pieces to trade information back and forth. This information can be used to monitor ITIL compliance or to keep an eye on new software as it is rolled out into the wild.

The HP Release Control software will also integrate with the updates change management solutions revealed today by HP. Those solutions are also ITIL-based and include updated interfaces for ease of use. HP Universal Configuration Management Database [CMDB] 7.5 and HP Discovery and Dependency Mapping 7.5 work together to chart and monitor the changes that appear in software repositories and within existing services.

The Universal CMDB gives IT managers a single view of all repositories within a company and monitors those for changes in deployment and production. Integrations with HP's existing software assets allow for the control of change and the coordination of changes with bug databases, software development processes, and security compliance.

Dennis Drogseth, vice president of Enterprise Management Associates, said, “Many traditional CMDBs are only asset-oriented and are often designed in a way that is unsuitable for accurate service impact information. With little to no visibility and context around business services, isolated data can sometimes trigger incorrect business decisions that cause major service disruptions. A more reflexive, federated system based in ITIL v3 and the CMS concept can help businesses gain better insight into the real service impact implications of changes and change-related processes.”

Many of the pieces in these updated business technology optimization solutions will be coming to the Web in July. HP also announced today that management consoles will be available as a service, including consoles to manage HP Release Control 4.0 and the Universal Configuration Management Database. With these service offerings, HP will give IT the ability to remotely observe, manage and create reports for most of its business technology optimization solutions.


Related Search Term(s): Application life-cycle management, ITIL, SOA & SaaS, Hewlett-Packard

Share this link: http://www.sysmannews.com/link/32384