CA Technologies Inc. is brushing up its mainframe software line with advanced analytics, improved automation, support for DevOps rapid application development and improved security offerings.

The company today also expanded or enhanced a wide range of development- and security-oriented products.

“We’re closing the loop on everything from building apps to deploying them, managing them and securing them,” said Chief Product Officer Ayman Sayed. “Our focus is on helping customers reduce the time between ideas and outcomes.”

CA Mainframe Operations Intelligence is a new algorithm-based suite that identifies and predicts system issues before they impact performance. It uses machine learning to minimize downtime and reduce the need for specialized mainframe operations skills.

A new release of CA Workload Automation makes it easier to accommodate new types of workloads emerging from big data, cloud and mobile applications. It securely schedules, manages and monitors cross-enterprise workloads through a web interface, resulting in up to a 50 percent reduction in workload management time and a 35 percent improvement in overall operations staff productivity, the company claimed.

CA Conversion Service is a cloud-based offering that helps convert data for analytics or stream processing applications.

CA Release Automation Connector for z/OS is a new tool that supports continuous delivery and deployment, including source code management integration with CA’s Endevor Software Change Manager. Endevor has been enhanced to manage Java components and provide better auditing capabilities.

The company also broadly enhanced its DevOps and agile programming tools. CA Agile Central, which is designed to coordinate work across multiple teams and programs using agile techniques, now makes it easier for users to access the information most relevant to their daily work within the context of a broader organizational strategy.

The software provides a hub for teams to collaboratively plan, prioritize and track work in a synchronized manner. Individual navigators then shorten the path between the user and work to be completed by moving frequently accessed pages to the foreground. A new “Quick Detail” feature lets developers update all relevant details of work items in context without leaving the page on which they’re working.

Other new features of CA Agile Central include quick and advanced filters, real-time updates as data changes and an catalog for custom applications.

Core application and infrastructure monitoring products also got a brush-up. CA Application Performance Management is getting a redesigned interface and improve monitoring of user experiences across cloud, mobile and on-premise applications. CA APM uses predictive analytics to guide novice users to a suggested diagnosis of application issues.

Its integration with recently-launched CA App Experience Analytics provides overall insight into user experience, application performance details and the health of web, mobile and wearable applications. New cloud connectors and extensions for Docker, the Nginx open-source web server and RabbitMQ open-source message broker software can be downloaded from the CA APM Marketplace. CA APM is also now available in the Amazon Web Services Marketplace.

To speed release times, CA announced that CA BlazeMeter, an open-source-based continuous application performance testing system, has been integrated with CA APM. CA BlazeMeter lets developers simulate user experiences with application performance details from CA APM, enabling DevOps teams to address potential performance issues earlier in the software development lifecycle.

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