14 DAY TRIAL // When it comes down to introducing IT Process automation capabilities into System Center, Microsoft has taken a bit of a shortcut with the acquisition of Opalis Software. Opalis will be responsible for the evolution of System Center in a direction required by customers and service providers that leverage Microsoft technologies, tools and applications in their server infrastructure. The Redmond company simply reacted to feedback requesting a higher degree of operation automation in datacenters. And, in this regard, Opalis products will be used in order to boost System Center with the addition of IT automation capabilities.
“This deal brings together the deep datacenter automation expertise of Opalis with the integrated physical and virtualized datacenter management capabilities of Microsoft System Center,” Brad Anderson, corporate vice president, Management & Services Division, explained. “Opalis’ software captures the IT processes, in a documented and repeatable way, which can be run over and over again. These capabilities will be added to Microsoft System Center to help customers automate complex IT processes, increase cost savings and shorten timeframes for IT service delivery across physical, virtual and cloud computing environments.”
IT automation was simply indispensable to building highly automated and scalable virtual environments, Anderson added. Customers already running Opalis products have been able to leverage integration with System Center. And, after it will swallow Opalis, Microsoft itself will be able to make System Center play nice with infrastructure software from CA, BMC, HP and additional companies.
Todd DeLaughter, the president and CEO of Opalis Software, explains that he considers automated response as nothing short of a key building block designed to usher in the future of IT. In this context, closed loop remediation of IT issues is regarded as a critical capability, especially for companies that need to cut down on manual response to IT problems overhead.
Automated response “also happens to be the foundation for the automation necessary to deliver cloud computing – self adjusting pools of computing resources that can be tuned based on real-time events. This is actually possible today with virtualization software, such as Microsoft Hyper-V Server, and automation tools, like Opalis and Microsoft System Center. The vendor who pulls this together with the cleanest, simplest approach will bring cloud computing to the masses,” DeLaughter added.