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THE OPEN GROUP APPROVES A NEW MANAGEMENT APPLICATION STANDARD TO HELP IT MANAGERS FOCUS ON BUSINESS GOALS
AIC Standard, Submitted by J.P. Morgan and Computer Associates, to Bridge the Gap between Technology and Business
MENLO PARK, Calif. (November 3, 1999) – The Open Group™, a vendor and technology-neutral consortium dedicated to enterprise integration, today announced the approval of a new management application standard, the Application Instrumentation and Control (AIC) Standard. The standard, submitted by J.P. Morgan & Co. Incorporated and Computer Associates International Inc. (CA) will help IT managers focus on managing IT resources to meet business objectives. The AIC approach meets a fundamental requirement of IT management today, which is to prioritize the management of technical resources with regard to specific business objectives.
The AIC standard addresses the pressing need for an applications management framework that is both business-process-focused and can be applied across a heterogeneous computing environment. The initial draft specification--which defines an open two-way application programming interface--has been proven by a reference implementation produced by J.P. Morgan in conjunction with CA. The reference implementation, based upon CA's Unicenter TNG enterprise management software, has successfully undergone advanced testing at J.P. Morgan. CA plans to deploy the standard in Unicenter TNG.
The customer driven AIC standard, originally named the Application Management Interface (AMI) standard, was submitted to The Open Group's Fast Track Standardization Process during which The Open Group's Enterprise Management Program reviewed and refined the specification to meet the approval requirements of the consortium and industry leading systems management vendors. The standard received final approval during this past week's Open Group member meeting."The leadership demonstrated by J.P. Morgan is the strongest possible indication that customers urgently need greater interoperability from their IT suppliers," said Allen Brown, President and CEO of The Open Group. "We are proud to have been selected by Computer Associates and J.P. Morgan to help drive the consensus process that enables competing suppliers to deliver products that meet this market need."
The AIC standard enables technology managers to prioritize IT services based on their business impact by:
1) providing facilities for defining the critical resources that create, affect or deliver a business process;
2) establishing a standard mechanism for managing control points within an application; and
3) creating a technology-neutral approach for integrating with external systems management frameworks.
"The introduction of the AIC standard opens the door to a new generation of business process management techniques," said Mike Reilly, J.P. Morgan's chief technology officer. "Companies using applications instrumented with AIC will now have the opportunity to monitor and manage the actual business process itself and not just the systems that support the process. This API is an excellent starting point for the development of end-to-end service level metrics focused on the availability and performance of our business process, not the underlying systems. As more applications migrate to hosting or ASP environments, we will need better tools to ensure the business is operating efficiently. This is one area where AIC will be a great help.
"By using the AIC and its Application Object model, technology managers can "see inside" their applications, rather than surveying and reviewing them through typical external means. This makes the AIC particularly well suited for custom applications that are developed in-house, where it may not be expedient to write custom application monitoring agents. The AIC also helps keep the footprint of additional software on the application machine as small as possible.
"AIC is the first practical industry standard that rationalizes technology management from a business perspective," said Sam Greenblatt, CA senior vice president of applied technology. "Ittherefore enables organizations to better align infrastructure and application investments with business priorities – something that is sorely needed as technology becomes a larger and larger component of the corporate budget."
With the standardization of AIC, The Open Group's Enterprise Management Program moves closer to its goal of manageability for all enterprise components. AIC will serve as the catalyst for a new Application Management Working Group focused on conformance of applications to standards for manageability.
"Businesses have long needed a way to instrument applications for two-way communications with performance and availability tools," said Paul Mason, Vice President of Infrastructure Software Research at International Data Corporation. "They wanted this in order to manage internal applications, but this was difficult to do economically when there was no standard API. Now the Open Group has made a major step by approving an API that can be used by all development tool and management tool vendors."
"Integrating applications into the management structure is key to the continued advance of effective Enterprise level IT Management," said Karl Schopmeyer, enterprise management program chair, The Open Group. "The AIC specification is a significant step forward because it addresses the needs of making the application an active component in management. It will allow applications to be instrumented for management with an open interface so that the information they provide can be used by many different management systems without modifying the applications. This specification will be an important part of our drive to incorporate manageability in the components to be managed."
About Computer Associates International,
Inc.
Computer Associates International, Inc. (NYSE: CA), the world leader in
mission-critical business computing, provides software, support and
integration services in more than 100 countries around the world. CA has
more than 17,500 employees and had revenue of $5.3 billion in fiscal year
1999. For more information about CA, please call 516-342-5224 or e-mail
info@cai.com. CA's World Wide Web address is www.cai.com.
About J.P. Morgan
J.P. Morgan is a leading global
financial firm that meets critical financial needs for business enterprises,
governments, and individuals. The firm advises on corporate strategy and
structure, raises capital, makes markets in financial instruments, and
manages investment assets. Morgan also commits its own capital to promising
enterprises and invests and trades to capture market opportunities. J.P.
Morgan's Web address is www.jpmorgan.com.
About The Open Group
The Open Group is committed to
delivering greater business efficiency by bringing together buyers and
suppliers of information systems to lower the cost and risks associated with
integrating new technology across the enterprise. The Open Group, a vender
and technology-neutral consortium, ensures that multi-vendor information
technology matches the demands and needs of customers. This is achieved
through the development and deployment of frameworks, polices, best
practices, standards, and conformance programs in pursuit of The Open
Group's vision, the concept of making all technology as open and accessible
as using a telephone.
By leveraging the expertise of its sponsors – Compaq Computer Corporation, Fujitsu Limited, Hewlett-Packard Company, Hitachi Limited, International Business Machines Corporation, NCR Corporation, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, Sun Microsystems Inc. - and other members comprising leading software companies, Fortune 500 users and government departments, The Open Group is well on its way to achieving its vision. Embracing the maxim: "we can do so much more together than alone", The Open Group is helping its members to stay ahead in the race to use technology to gain competitive advantage. Additional information about The Open Group is available at the consortium's web site at http://www.opengroup.org.
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