The Uber Orchestrator from CA Technologies

Transcription

1 The Uber Orchestrator from CA Technologies

2 Table of Contents Executive Summary Simplify Complexity Maintain Control Improve User Experience Bridge Islands of Automation Automate Disaster Recovery Plans Model-Based GUI Conclusion 2

3 Executive Summary Challenge Enterprises today face a few major challenges: how to fully orchestrate the apps that define their business, and how to automate the IT processes underpinning these apps when much of the infrastructure used to run them is outsourced to cloud providers. Opportunity Some cloud service providers offer their own orchestration tools, and each onpremises tool has automation capabilities. But while we own our apps, providers are interchangeable depending on what they can offer, and for what price. We should be able to switch between cloud providers and between cloud, on-premises and hybrid infrastructure as, and when, the business requires, with minimal effort and without losing any control. Sometimes we might want to use more than one provider at the same time, leveraging the advantages of each provider simultaneously. Benefits What is needed is an orchestration layer that remains constant, even as cloud services come and go; one that enterprises own along with their core apps. CA Technologies calls this solution the Uber Orchestrator. It s a self-service manager and orchestration tool for connecting the pre-existing automation and orchestration apparatuses in your company to cloud providers. 3

4 Simplify Complexity The cloud gives us flexibility at short notice, while reducing cost. However, it adds yet another layer of complexity to an already convoluted IT landscape, especially as we can spread workloads around clouds and our data centers. Uber Orchestration takes care of this particular layer of complexity. The administrative work of dedicating specific tasks to cloud providers can be automated to save time and money, allowing IT staff to focus on more demanding work. Despite the speed of this digital revolution, a tool-agnostic orchestrator such as the Uber Orchestrator from CA remains unaffected. Any new technology can be accommodated with plugins available for free and updated regularly on the CA Automation Marketplace, so the Uber Orchestrator can be the one constant your company can rely on as it goes along the turbulent path to digital transformation. The Uber Orchestrator from CA gives you the power to quickly assimilate potentially disruptive technologies and use them as enablers to drive your company s digital transformation. It fits around your existing toolset, meaning you do not have to rip and replace existing tools. It also acts as a mediator, alleviating any friction between disparate tools and allowing them to collaborate smoothly while providing a single point of control. Services of any complexity can be integrated in a short time frame. With disruption now the norm, the technology we choose needs to be as flexible and open-ended as possible. The success of our business revolves around the success of our core apps, which lies in the ability to quickly embrace the latest technologies. The consistency an industry-leading orchestrator provides allows you to fully embrace cloud services into your toolset and take advantage of them faster than your competitors do. 4

5 Maintain Control While each cloud provider (Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure etc.) and on-premises tool (VMware, Dell EMC, Cisco, NetApp and so on) has its own individual automation capabilities, only a single orchestration layer gives you an enterprise-wide view of all processes and tools. Automation solutions for individual products: Are often blinkered and not fully integrated with the products around them Lack the bigger picture: the ability to orchestrate from cloud to on-premises and within a hybrid cloud environment Have poor reliability and scalability Often lack enterprise-level governance and security requirements Cloud services come and go, so having end-to-end control of all processes in the cloud or hybrid cloud, irrespective of cloud provider, gives reassuring consistency. The Uber Orchestrator is suitable for enterprises of any scale, including those that carry out millions of transactions every day. It integrates with ITSM tools, orchestration tools, applications, operating systems, databases, CMDB, web services and many others to ensure the integration of your existing environment. Actually owning key business tools such as an orchestrator is vital to having control over the growth of the enterprise. While technology constantly advances, the ability to manipulate it in line with business strategy is a key differentiator that should remain at your fingertips. The same applies to the ability to change a cloud provider quickly, taking advantage of a better offer or additional functionality, without going through migration challenges. 5

6 Improve User Experience When users experience downtime or other incidents, a fast and accurate response by your IT services team will build positive customer relationships and a good reputation for your brand. Administrators are skilled and valuable to your company, but for every incident that requires their expertise, they are spending much more time on simple, easily resolvable tasks. Introducing self-service with automated service incident remediation can take the power to resolve the most common problems for example, forgotten passwords and put it in the hands of the users. This sense of control and faster time to resolution improves the user experience while saving your team the time to work on the complicated issues. Automated service incident remediation uses service orchestration to analyze incoming tickets in your existing IT service management processes, sort them into pre-identified categories, and automatically start the appropriate predefined workflow ultimately resolving and closing the ticket without manual intervention. In this way, the Uber Orchestrator reduces the cost per ticket and improves your overall service delivery. 6

7 Bridge Islands of Automation Islands of automation create a problem that occurs when automation is introduced opportunistically without a holistic vision. Often automation is brought in just to relieve a particular pain point: Each element is automated without prior consideration of how this will affect the ecosystem it sits in, or how various automation tools will work together. This happens when good intentions are flawed by disjointed, distributed automation implementation. Although these kinds of initiatives stem from attempts to reduce complexity while saving time and effort, the overall result is often to convolute the IT landscape further, causing delays and inefficiencies that occur when tools are not running in sync. The problem can be avoided by a technologically agnostic solution that allows tools of a heterogeneous nature to work together cohesively, under one unified automation engine, without bias to any particular element of the toolchain. This ensures the smooth-running automation of each tool and, crucially, between different tools. Even if tools are orchestrated with one another, the added complexity of one or more cloud services running concurrently means yet another orchestration layer is needed. The orchestration solutions offered by cloud providers will not suffice, as they merely handle interactions with that cloud, while we may want to switch providers or switch workloads to our data centers or a hybrid cloud arrangement. 7

8 Automate Disaster Recovery Plans Disaster can strike at any time power outages, security breaches or technological failure, caused by natural events, malicious attacks or simple human error. Enterprises may have disaster recovery plans (DRPs), but these are not always easy to implement, especially when critical business processes are down or compromised. To prevent undue impact to your business, it is essential to restore vital functions to working order as quickly as possible. Specialized automation can speed up the recovery process to prevent revenue loss, mitigate damage to your brand and meet recovery time objectives (RTOs) and recovery point objectives (RPOs). The Uber Orchestrator automates the execution of your DRP, running actions and checks with minimal human effort. Many organizations that have developed recovery plans fail to regularly test them, which can make them less effective when they are actually needed. Automated disaster recovery plans follow the same actions for each execution (real or test), allowing you to run through your DRP early and often, to ensure all aspects of your business are covered and help you prepare for every scenario. With the Uber Orchestrator, running tests becomes a simple matter of routine, and any modifications to your plan can be thoroughly vetted. Automating your organization s back-up plan provides you with the confidence to see any disaster through, so your company can continue on its path to success with minimal interruptions. 8

9 Model-Based GUI Orchestration software allows communication and dependencies between a variety of tools to be modeled and mapped so their relationships can be viewed and understood even by non-technical staff. The chosen cloud provider represents just one element of the whole process model that can be interchanged with minimal fuss, or even automatically if you set up rules for choosing which cloud should be selected for a particular type of task. Compare this to a pre-orchestration state in which an assorted collection of automation tools run autonomously without overall supervision, and it s easy to see how orchestration is always beneficial and often necessary. 9

10 Conclusion Automation is key to building, running and updating the key applications that define and facilitate business growth in today s digital world. But automation is useless without control. Ironically, automation done incorrectly can renege rather than improve the control we have over the various elements of our complex IT landscape, so we need orchestration to have mastery over it. The cloud is a vital enabler in any agile strategy. The ability to have full control of our automation and usage of cloud service, whether we use it for our entire infrastructure or as part of a hybrid structure, is key. We need the orchestration tool we use to control our cloud usage to be consistent, efficient and scalable, all of which are key features of the Uber Orchestrator from CA Technologies. Only with such a tool can we have mastery over our core apps and be in full control of their ability to grow our business. The Uber Orchestrator is just one of many capabilities of CA Automic Service Orchestration. It represents your first step on a maturity curve that has the potential to give your company full-stack self-service of everything, for continuous service. CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA) creates software that fuels transformation for companies and enables them to seize the opportunities of the application economy. Software is at the heart of every business, in every industry. From planning to development to management and security, CA is working with companies worldwide to change the way we live, transact, and communicate across mobile, private, and public cloud, distributed and mainframe environments. Learn more at ca.com. Copyright 2018 CA. All rights reserved. All trademarks, trade names, service marks and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies. This document is for your informational purposes only. CA assumes no responsibility for the accuracy or completeness of the information. To the extent permitted by applicable law, CA provides this document as is without warranty of any kind, including, without limitation, any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or noninfringement. In no event will CA be liable for any loss or damage, direct or indirect, from the use of this document, including, without limitation, lost profits, business interruption, goodwill or lost data, even if CA is expressly advised in advance of the possibility of such damages. CA does not provide legal advice. Neither this document nor any CA software product referenced herein shall serve as a substitute for your compliance with any laws (including but not limited to any act, statute, regulation, rule, directive, policy, standard, guideline, measure, requirement, administrative order, executive order, etc. (collectively, Laws )) referenced in this document. You should consult with competent legal counsel regarding any Laws referenced herein. CS _