CA announced that it has acquired privately-held Oblicore, a provider of service level management (SLM) software for enterprises and service providers. CA says Oblicore supports and strengthens its ability to set, measure and optimize service levels to meet business expectations across enterprise and cloud environments. Oblicore's solutions also extend CA's capabilities in cloud vendor management and assurance of cloud service quality. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
"Oblicore's business-centric approach gives enterprises and service providers better understanding and control over the quality and value of their IT service portfolio," according to Ajei Gopal, executive vice president of CA's Products and Technology Group. "With Oblicore and the recent acquisitions of NetQoS and Cassatt, CA has a greater ability to help customers optimize IT for better business results and capitalize on the emerging cloud computing opportunity."
As a long-time CA partner, Oblicore has integrations with CA solutions including CA Spectrum Infrastructure Manager, CA Service Desk Manager, CA Wily Introscope, CA eHealth and CA Clarity PPM. Oblicore is designed for open connectivity to virtually any data source, with integrations to business systems and application and infrastructure monitoring tools from Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, IBM, HP, BMC and other providers.
Oblicore's top-down methodology for SLM begins with contracts that use business language and metrics. These contracts integrate with technical data sources for continuous service performance measurement against contract terms and conditions. The resulting transparency and control allow customers to better manage expectations between IT and the business, as well as contracts with external service providers. The use of service contracts to manage service delivery becomes even more important as enterprises leverage cloud services. Lack of direct management control makes these contracts the primary assurance mechanism. Oblicore will play a significant role in helping enterprises assure the quality of cloud services.
CIOs can also quantify the overall value of their service portfolio by combining Oblicore's measure of service quality with metrics on service cost, consumption and business objective alignment from CA Service Catalog, CA Service Accounting and CA Clarity PPM. Oblicore solutions will be available directly from CA and through approved channel partners. For more information, visit the CA website.