Security and systems vendor NetIQ has launched a new product called Aegis, its first foray into the IT Process Automation (ITPA) market.

Aegis is a control and automation platform for IT processes, which converges NetIQ’s system and security management products, as well as connecting tools from other vendors.

Travis Greene, NetIQ chief service management strategist, said the strategy for a “heterogeneous IT process automation” tool was developed in response to market demand.

The tool, which took three years for NetIQ to develop, pushes ahead of rival products in its functionality, according to the firm. Although NetIQ is late joining the process automation market, Aegis is the first “intelligent” ITPA tool, said Greene. Aegis intelligently auto-routes data and events to the right operators, and through tool integration, shifts the process bias from “doing” to “approving,” he added.

The new capabilities are expected to speed up automation response and reduce organisations' needs, according to NetIQ. The ability of Aegis to control diverse tools means it should also improve the return on investment (ROI) on an organisation's existing tools and control costs.

Apart from these capabilities, Aegis is a standard ITPA tool, enabling process virtualisation and workflow modelling. Aegis also produces an audit record for each process it executes, and this delivers compliance with regulations such as Payment Card Industry (PCI) and Sarbanes-Oxley, said Greene.