CA Technologies (Nasdaq: CA) and Unisys Corporation today announced that they have extended their alliance to offer joint solutions that accelerate customers’ path from virtualization to the cloud.

The solutions will combine CA Technologies virtualization management, service automation, and service management products with Unisys’ virtualization and cloud advisory, planning, design and implementation services.

The first solution, available today in North America, is designed to help organizations overcome “virtual stall” – the complications that can arise from enterprise virtualization projects. This is a significant challenge for enterprises – both in their existing data centers and as they evolve their infrastructure toward cloud computing.

This joint solution also represents a major step in Unisys’ strategy to help enterprise customers implement cloud computing to extend their data-center capabilities while continuing to leverage existing IT investments.

“The CA Technologies and Unisys alliance leverages the strengths of each organization to offer cloud solutions that are comprehensive, reliable and secure,” said Roger Pilc, general manager, Virtualization and Automation, CA Technologies. “Our collaboration offers a perfect match of expert advisory services and best-in-class technology, enabling customers to reap the rewards of evolving from virtualization to cloud computing.”

“Unisys and CA Technologies bring decades of experience and applied innovation in the data center and IT services management,” said Fred Dillman, chief technology officer, Unisys. “By combining our complementary strengths, we can help our clients address some very real challenges they are facing in their virtualization and cloud projects and more quickly realize the benefits.”

Solving Virtualization Challenges on the Way to the Cloud
When virtualizing IT environments on their way to the cloud, organizations often run into challenges after about 30 or 40 percent of deployment has taken place, due to factors such as added complexity, staffing requirements, service level agreement (SLA) management, and departmental politics. This “virtual stall” can significantly delay the realization of key benefits of virtualization such as infrastructure responsiveness and availability and cost reduction.

The joint CA Technologies-Unisys solution blends CA Technologies service catalog, process automation, self-service provisioning, configuration management, and charge back/accounting capabilities, with Unisys’ expert advisory, planning, design and implementation services. This combination of technology and services gives customers a better way to provision, control, secure, and optimize complex multivendor IT environments.

CA Technologies and Unisys plan to expand the range of solutions they offer to help customers create private, hybrid and public clouds by providing unified management of physical and virtual environments, along with automation that spans IT domains and critical IT service management processes.

To learn more about the CA Technologies and Unisys alliance, visit http://www.unisys.com/unisys/strategicalliance/index.jsp?id=1120000970009610167.