GridApp Systems, Inc., provider of database automation solutions, introduced the latest version of its database automation software, which emphasizes self-service IT and self-powering databases. The new release, GridApp Clarity 6.5, incorporates fine-grained permissioning and delegated administration, designed to enable business application owners to access and manage application resources without the need to engage specialized IT professionals, such as database administrators.
"GridApp Clarity fundamentally changes the enterprise's approach to database automation," Rob Gardos, CEO of GridApp Systems, tells 5 Minute Briefing. A model for this new approach may be embedded databases - which are self-administering, with very little intervention required. "There will always by tasks that experienced database administrators will need to handle, like interpreting what the actual data means and figuring out the best way to represent that data," he explains. "That being said, with Clarity, we view critical components of database management to be completely abstracted which, in many ways, is more in line with how embedded databases are administered."
Clarity also helps bring databases in line with burgeoning trends in virtualization and private cloud initiatives, Gardos explains. Databases typically have been too complex for the cloud, but Clarity is designed to bring self-service to infrastructure and application management. "The key to self-service is safe and reliable delivery of resources - whether it be providing a database to a programmer for development or patching a production database," he says. "The challenge of self-service is that you are empowering non-experts to manage or gain access to complex applications like databases. Our vision is indeed that from a deployment, patching and policy management perspective the work is done ‘behind the scenes' and is completely abstracted from the end user."
Clarity 6.5 enables clients to automatically pinpoint which databases require patching, analyze patch dependencies, and monitor them to ensure that patches are properly installed. Sophisticated patch conflict detection proactively identifies potential issues before they become problems.
In addition, the new version of Clarity has an enhanced API to enable integration with systems management, DCA, configuration management and monitoring solutions, such as HP and BMC Software automation products. It also includes an updated reporting engine, allowing advanced insight into IT operations to enable detailed tracking of IT operations by department, productivity, as well as custom reporting.
Clarity supports Sybase, Oracle, SQL Server, DB2 UDB, and MySQL. More information on Clarity 6.5 is available here.