Collation tunes up infrastructures for Web services

By John Hogan, SearchWebServices.com News Editor 19 Sep 2003 | SearchWebServices.com

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Collation Inc. has announced the availability of the latest release of its configuration management software, which the company said can help companies ensure that their service-oriented infrastructures are in tune to handle Web services.

"What we've done is extend the reach of our auto-discovery from mission-critical Web applications to include legacy software servers in the data center," said Bob Roblin, president and CEO of the Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup.

He said Collation has also extended its analytics to enable the comparison of infrastructure components to support data-center consolidation, as well as bolstering its firewall security to allow its software to be used in a data center environment.

How does this apply to Web services?

"If you look at look at all Web services today, they rely on underlying application infrastructure to perform the heavy lifting and logic, and if those infrastructures -- we call them service-oriented infrastructures -- aren't working and available, the Web service won't be able to deliver its functionality," Roblin said.

A benefit for administrators

One analyst said version 1.5 of the company's Confignia application will help system administrators avoid changes that will hurt application performance, as well as give them a means of tracking changes.

"I think one of the most important elements of the new release is its ability to manage legacy applications as well as Web services software," said Mary Johnston Turner, a vice president at Boston-based Summit Strategies. "This type of functionality is a real requirement for any IT shop that is undertaking a major consolidation effort or is rolling out a new Web services application."

New features of Confignia 1.5, which began shipping in late August, include:

-- Expanded auto-discovery that automatically finds legacy software, custom software servers and applications in the Web application infrastructure.

-- New comparison capabilities that allow users to run infrastructure comparisons that automatically compare staging and production environments, individual components or groups of components to uncover configuration inconsistencies.

-- An enhanced reporting engine that offers an expanded data center reporting interface, including column sorting and improved layout that provides greater flexibility in viewing interdependency data.

Pricing of Confignia 1.5 is based on the size of the CPUs being managed. Roblin said there are five different pricing packages to cover small to large data center environments.

Smaller players being snapped up

Turner said that with the recent spate of acquisitions, she wouldn't be surprised if a company like Collation was snapped up, but she said that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

"Obviously, there have been many management tool company acquisitions lately, and I fully expect to see more as the major management suite vendors buy their way into Web services management," she said. "Collation's functionality will be important over the long term whether it remains a stand-alone company or is ultimately embraced by a larger vendor."

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Article: XML traffic driving infrastructure spending

Article: Web services and the data center of tomorrow, part one

Best Web Links: Service-oriented architecture

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