This summer, we published the results from our IT Process Automation testing where we looked at RealOps (purchased by BMC), iConclude (purchased by Opsware and then HP), and Opalis.

Recently we wrote about NetIQ's venture into this market with Aegis and Optinuity (who originally declined the request to participate in the testing) at the Next Generation Data Center conference in San Francisco a few months ago.

This market continued to be hyper-competitive as vendors grasp for market share and aggressively look to increase their customer base.

We came across another vendor in this area recently, Stratavia.

Stratavia's Data Palette IT Data Center Automation Platform has similar messaging around the automation of complex, error-prone, manually intensive yet repetitive IT administration tasks. It is taking the approach that while many of the competing products require manually steps to resolve process issues, Stratavia utilizes a predictive analytics solution designed to detect and resolve issues before they can affect operations.

Once IT admins can report on the issues, they can use the metrics to identify and categorize frequently occurring problems, as well as typical administrative responses. This data can then be leveraged to standardize tasks and problem resolution methods. We hope to get Stratavia into our labs soon!