CA announced that its offerings in three critical systems management categories have been chosen as “the best of the best” by Enterprise Management Associates (EMA). EMA named CA’s solutions in the Enterprise Systems Management (ESM) suite, virtual systems management, and job scheduling/workload management categories as “All-Star First Team” selections—beating out competing offerings from leading vendors.

Criteria for EMA’s selection included:

• Strength of product offering, functionality, and platform support
• Commitment to product vision and delivering innovation
• Customer feedback including satisfaction and market penetration
• EMA’s perspective from independent evaluations of expert analysts

“After a very careful and deliberate analysis, based on objective statistical measures, as well as the independent evaluations of our expert analysts, CA came out clearly on top in a number of Enterprise Systems Management categories,” said Andi Mann, research director for EMA. “With such a rigorous examination, against some very strong competitors, to be an All-Star in even one category is significant—and to be named to the All-Star First Team even more so. But to be selected on the All-Star First Team for multiple categories is really quite exceptional.”

In naming only CA to “First Team” position for virtual systems management, EMA cited the company’s broad support for virtualization technologies, including server and operating system virtualization and grid/cluster systems, and heterogeneous virtualization environments, including VMware, Microsoft, Red Hat, IBM, Sun, Symantec and HP. EMA also cited both CA’s packaging of multiple key disciplines for managing physical and virtual systems into a single, normalized and standardized solution, and its high customer satisfaction.

EMA gave CA similar honors in the job scheduling/workload automation category based on the breadth of CA’s cross-platform offerings, the depth of their functionality, and the company’s progressive vision. In addition, EMA cited CA’s high level of customer satisfaction, unified product GUI, and clear, innovative roadmap.

In the ESM suite category, EMA highlighted CA’s Enterprise IT Management (EITM) strategy and the new solutions shipping as part of CA’s Unicenter product line. EMA also noted that CA continues to maintain significant market penetration across most ESM disciplines, providing customers with core coverage for a full range of current and legacy platforms, from handheld PDAs to the mainframe.

“By selecting CA as the top vendor in multiple systems management disciplines, EMA has confirmed our technological excellence, market leadership, and unmatched understanding of customer needs,” said Ajei Gopal, executive vice president of the EITM Group at CA. “Through our EITM vision, we will continue to perform with excellence in all of these areas to help our global customers meet their evolving enterprise computing challenges.”

Click here to view a CA excerpt of the EMA report (http://www.ca.com/us/analysts/reports/collateral.aspx?CID=165129).