Intelligent Enterprise

Software provider CA on Monday rolled out a new release of its Unicenter Service Catalog, which is designed to deliver IT services in terms that are understandable to businesses as opposed to complex IT terms.

Unicenter Service Catalog release 11.2 is meant to benefit both IT organizations and the business units that consume IT services, said CA. The IT services are defined in business terms to help customers understand their function, cost, and other attributes.

For businesses, the catalog provides a centralized, secure location where they can find, review, and order available IT services or request new ones.

For IT organizations, the catalog shows who is requesting IT services and how often, so that resources can be better allocated across the business.

Enhancements to the new release include an easy-to-use "Web store" for searching catalogs, requesting services, managing existing requests, and reviewing request histories; custom forms for simplified data entry; and highly configurable rules-based automation for managing service requests.

Additionally, CA rolled out a new release of Unicenter Service Accounting that lets customers get a handle on their IT service costs through budgeting and planning controls. Release 11.2 comes with metrics that measure consumption of IT resources across the business.

Both Unicenter Service Catalog and Unicenter Service Accounting are the first major releases of CA's Service Level Management products, unveiled in April at its user conference. The products simplify the process of managing and improving the quality of IT services.

"Slow, unclear, and inadequately managed communication between IT and the business remains a primary underlying cause of poor alignment between technology spend and business priorities," said Robert Stroud, IT service management and IT governance evangelist at CA. "CA Service Level Management addresses this communications gap by providing business and IT managers with the functional and financial language they need to bring appropriate discipline to the request and delivery of IT services."