Software management vendor CA will make a major push into the virtualisation space today with a tool aimed at managing virtual and physical resources.

Data Center Automation Manager (DCA Manager) release 11.2 integrates with existing management tools such as BMC Remedy and HP OpenView, and supports the main virtualisation platforms from Microsoft, VMware, Sun Microsystems and XenSource.

The system is designed to help customers better manage their virtual resources, and to centralise the administration of virtual and physical systems.

CA initially made DCA Manager available to a limited set of customers at the beginning of 2008.

The product represents a shift by the firm away from buying in new and upcoming technologies to developing them in-house.

CA gained a reputation in the past for being acquisition-hungry, but it has been very quiet on the merger front in the past two years.

"This was created exclusively within the company, not through an acquisition, " Al Nugent, chief technology officer at CA, told vnunet.com.

"I started development on this three years ago. We looked at BladeLogic and Opsware [as possible acquisition targets] but, while they were good for physical assets, they were not so good at switching between the physical and the virtual.

"We are using virtual images to respond to capacity and new application development opportunities."

Nugent added that the release allows firms to reduce manual IT labour requirements. "The way of addressing costs is through automation," he said.

"The highest percentage of budgets is on labour. DCA Manager is about providing an automated response to whatever conditions are in the environment, such as power consumption."

The DCA Manager launch forms part of a wider range of product updates that CA is announcing today.

These include Software Change Manager 12, which adds support for IPv6 and a new developer interface, and eHealth Network Performance Manager 6.1, which is designed to help firms better manage networks and business support services.