HP on Tuesday will roll out an ambitious IT automation strategy that melds product capabilities gained through multiple acquisitions, supports SOA, and features SaaS-based options.

The enterprise-level offerings address change lifecycle management and the problem isolation lifecycle. Introduced under HP's Business Technology Optimization banner, the roster of products features new technologies and also integrates assets acquired from Bristol Technology, Opsware, and Mercury Interactive. Products are being demonstrated at the HP Software Universe conference in Las Vegas.

"Finally, the pieces are coming together," with HP mixing in its Bristol and Opsware technologies, said Evelyn Hubbert, senior analyst with Forrester Research.

In the change lifecycle management space, HP is unveiling HP Release Control 4.0, providing real-time visibility of change activity. Release Control features integrations across the HP Business Service Automation portfolio and helps minimize service disruption and lower the risk of change, HP said.

Formerly HP Change Control Manager and gained through HP's Mercury buy, Release Control 4.0 features network and server automation capabilities derived from Opsware.

HP Business Availability Center 7.5, meanwhile, provides advance warnings of problems and resolution, HP said. It offers capabilities for discovering and managing business processes and transactions. Software incorporated from Bristol enables managing of business processes and mainframe transactions. Business impacts of service disruptions can be gauged.

"It helps [to] also predict when outages or disruptions will happen," said Ramin Sayar, senior director for products and business service management at HP. Users can perform pattern matching and behavioral analysis on previous performance degradations or changes.

"[The product] helps them move from reactive management to more proactive and predictive capabilities," Sayar said.

Both Release Control and Business Availability Center can be deployed in a SaaS fashion.

For configuration management, HP is providing HP Universal CMBD (Configuration Management Database) 7.5, which supports ITIL best practices for IT operations.

With Universal CMDB, HP is offering a federated approach to configuration management in which databases are discovered and federated into a single repository for understanding business and service impacts and to help change and configuration management processes, said Sayar.

"The key benefit [of Universal CMDB] for customers and end-users is that they'll have a single place [to go for] what we refer to as the single version of the truth," Sayar said. Information is provided on what business services are relying on which applications and which databases, network devices, and storage devices are supporting a service.

The database leverages Web services and SOA to integrate HP products and third-party products. Also, rogue Web services can be discovered via Universal CMBD's dependency mapping. Integration with HP's SOA Center product ensures governance and management for SOA, HP said.

The product can manage virtual environments, such VMware, Microsoft virtualization software, or Sun Solaris Zones. It also offers dependency mapping to cover SANS.

The configuration management solution also leverages HP Discovery and Dependency Mapping 7.5, for examining relationships between applications and infrastructure. It features a data-sharing software development kit.

Universal CMDB 7.5 also is offered via SaaS.

In offering products a SaaS-based option, the company assists with deploying the products. "A lot of customers struggle with resources or hardware or [using] the tools and we can help them transition," Sayar said. Products also can be deployed in-house.

"I think it's really important for them to step up to the plate," after having delayed a SaaS offering, Hubbert said. "Clients really want to adopt SaaS because they feel some of the things are better handled by somebody else or [are] less strategic to them."

HP also is offering consulting and integration services to automate change and configuration and service asset and release management. Services leverage the HP Service Management Reference Model based on ITIL V3.

Also being introduced Tuesday are:

* HP Client Automation 7.2, for software process automation. It features support for HP Remote Client Solutions and manages security vulnerabilities. The product is integrated with HP Service Automation Visualizer.
* HP Storage Essentials 6.0, for service-to-storage visibility by integrating with Universal CMDB. Reporting is featured.
HP Service Automation Reporter 7.0, which links to Universal CMDB and assists with providing a better view of business services.

All of the new products ship in July.