IT Platforms for IT Transformation

Seems like every software vendor has an IT platform today, and for good reasons. The right IT platform can support transformation efforts. Employees can more efficiently engage in self-service with a multitude of digital services and processes—such as requesting services with automated fulfillment. A good platform should reduce the need to build and maintain integrations, provide better insights through shared data and analytics, and reduce the user learning curve through a common UI and common best practices.

But not all IT platforms are created equal. Many are blank slates that require custom coding—a job that creates technical debt for future maintenance, decreases the value of AI/ML, and drives up total cost of ownership. What’s more, teams must agree on best practices for implementing each process step and reconcile processes across multiple cloud and on-premises investments. IT platforms shouldn’t compound the drama.

The Evolution of the Micro Focus ITOM Platform

Micro Focus has announced a new brand for our ITOM platform. Known as OPTIC (The Operations Platform for Transformation, Intelligence, and Cloud), let’s address why we are rebranding now.

The original Micro Focus “ITOM Platform” was launched in 2017, primarily to address the need to simplify installation and updates of our products using containers. Over the last four years, our platform technology has continued to evolve. With an increase in microservice-based shared services, we’ve unified approaches to identity management, single-sign on, container management, and have expanded integration capabilities through an API gateway. But the progress made in 2020 really took things to the next level.

The theme in 2020 was “convergence”, which dramatically improves your experience. This progress led us to decide that our ITOM Platform needed a new name. Specific convergence capabilities that were delivered include:

• Convergence of the user experience

With the release of HCMX and Asset Management X we have begun to standardize on the highly-intuitive SMAX interface for user self-service. All of our Enterprise Service Management products will eventually use this interface to support end users.

• Convergence of data and analytics

The COSO Data Lake, which is being renamed the OPTIC Data Lake, simplifies the collection, normalization and storage of data from Micro Focus Operations Bridge, Network Operations Management, Data Center Automation and a massive number of third-party vendors. It enables common data analysis and data visualization for important operations tasks such as automated event correlation.

• Convergence of automation capabilities

Micro Focus Robotic Process Automation and Operations Orchestration have come together to offer the best in both UI and API-based automated processes and workflows, to span multiple applications and digital transformation use cases.

• Convergence of discovery and topology mapping

Micro Focus Universal Discovery and Universal CMDB are absolutely world-class at discovering and mapping hybrid IT assets. But in 2020, Micro Focus was able to provide a single instance across multiple Micro Focus products to discover and map hybrid IT assets across multi-cloud, containers, and on-premises IT using Smart Software Analytics to identify unrecognized software.

In spite of the pandemic, 2020 was an epic year of delivery for our research and development teams, and that delivery justifies a new brand for our platform, OPTIC.

The Micro Focus IT Platform Is Different

Rather than trying to copy all the other platforms, Micro Focus has built OPTIC to help you transform without drama; harness built-in, unlimited-use intelligence at the core; and optimize your use of the cloud as a full partner.

Transform without drama

OPTIC makes practical transformations possible—building on what already works through open, composable REST APIs and a broad set of connectors. In other words, you don’t need to replace valuable workhorse systems, such as your existing Business Intelligence (BI) tools for reporting. Instead, you can build on those solutions with these drama-reducing capabilities:

• Unified process automation with embedded best-practices content that improves productivity without requiring brittle custom code.
• Discovery and topology mapping for both cloud and on-premises environments that enables efficient management based on current configurations.
• A single interface for user self-service, backed by smart virtual agents, that reduces user frustration while improving response times and staff efficiency.
• Flexible deployment options—in the cloud, in containers, as a service, or on premises—and the ability to switch as needed.

Harness built-in, unlimited-use intelligence at the core

While competitors have scrambled to partner or acquire AI/ML tools, bolt them on, and then charge you more for their use, OPTIC is different. It has built-in, unlimited-use intelligence at the core to normalize, store, and make sense of all the data that is produced by the variety of tools found across IT environments. Besides saving you money, embedded intelligence results in better analysis with algorithms perfectly tuned for the known data sources within OPTIC.

Optimize your use of the cloud as a full partner

OPTIC allows you to discover, monitor, manage, and govern cloud services in tandem with your on-premises approach—maximizing the customer experience and business return. You can install transparent guardrails for cloud costs and policies. Unify performance and availability management across all hybrid cloud and on-premises applications and infrastructure. And stay open to new possibilities with multicloud deployment options. With the cloud as your partner, you can extend operational best practices while retaining cloud agility.

Your Platform for Change

Ultimately, OPTIC is the automation engine built to help you quickly introduce innovative services as you move towards delivering the self-driving IT your business craves. Building on what already works, you can take a high tech, low drama approach to unifying the business user experience and improving operational efficiency. Backed by intelligence at the core, you can make your tools smarter without paying extra. And by optimizing your use of the cloud, you can also optimize service delivery across every environment. In short, you can take your transformation where it needs to go without all the drama.

For more information, check out the Micro Focus Universe sessions on OPTIC, including the ITOM Keynote, "Simplify the Complexity of IT and Build Resilience for What’s Next" and the technical session, "Explore the Advancements and Advantages of the Micro Focus ITOM Platform."