Data Center Automation

Today, along with the acquisition of Emprisa Networks, and following the acquisition of Realops, BMC announced the Service automation suite of solutions. This includes :

• Discovery and mapping of the complete IT environment, including its relationships to business processes and transactions
• Full-scale Configuration Automation capability across network devices, physical and virtual servers, and client systems
• Change Management to support configuration policy adherence and process automation
• Orchestration and automation of activities supporting IT processes, reducing errors and expenses in task execution across operational processes and toolsets
• Automation of Continuous Compliance, including audit and enforcement of standard configurations across heterogeneous IT environments

I’ve been working on the second item in the list for the past year, and now that more of this is announced, I’ll provide more information about what this does, and how runbook automation, coupled with configuration automation can solve many of the challenges that IT operators face today.

Today, BMC is announcing that it acquires Emprisa Network. It will complement the client and server Configuration Automation products, as well as the recent Realops acquisition to provide the Service Automation set of solutions.

Emprisa Networks, Inc., the leading provider of smart network configuration, compliance and change management solutions, offers solutions for extending IT service management initiatives to the network infrastructure. Emprisa’s E-NetAware solution provides immediate return on investment in several key areas – improves service availability with less change errors; automates configuration management for improved operational efficiencies, enhances network security through policy-based configuration management and greatly improves service responsiveness. E-NetAware provides support for routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, wireless access points and other network devices from over 25 vendors.

I’ll provide more details on this technology in a future blog.

Today, BMC announced the acquisition of Realops to build up the datacenter automation capabilities:

RealOps AutoPilot products automate the business of operations allowing IT organizations to deliver higher levels of service at lower costs to business users. Built on the industry leading RealOps AMP (Automation Management Platform), AutoPilot solutions for Problem, Change and Service Management automate the repetitive, manual tasks IT staffs perform every day.

You will get more details on that blog soon.

Yesterday, the Public Patent Foundation announced that they are challenging patent # 7,124,289 issued to Opsware in 2006:

The challenged Opsware patent claims methods for automatically configuring or installing software on a plurality of computing devices having different respective sets of software and/or configurations of operating parameters.

In November 2006, Opsware announced :

The patent — number 7,124,289 — covers the cornerstone of Opsware’s technology, the ability to automate the management of servers and network devices across a data center through model-based control. This innovation allows models of granular configuration information about servers or networks to be stored as records in a database and, as changes are made to any aspect of a systems configuration model, to push those changes to any relevant servers or network devices. This technique supports automation for even extremely large and global datacenters, and it provides a fast, efficient and cost-saving approach to ensuring consistency and compliance.

It’s not clear why this patent is challenged now. The patent was filed on October 31st 2000, but the argument made by pubpat is that various open source project existed before the filling date.