Yesterday at it's annual Software Universe conference in Barcelona, HP unveiled the product at the end of the rainbow arc of recent IT and management support software vendor acquisitions, and have named their pot of gold "Automated Operations 1.0." Incorporating components from Peregrine, Mercury, Opsware, and HP's own OpenView products, Automated Operations promises a new level of integration and automation across the IT organization.

As more and more organizations embrace ITIL (a worthy goal, IMHO) more and more vendors are focusing on providing products tailored to that goal, and HP appears to be well-positioned to compete in that market. Faced with competition from the likes of CA and IBM, HP's position as a major hardware vendor-an expanding position-places them outside the silos that more traditional operations management vendors occupy. HP sells boxes to both companies which have long recognized the benefits of automated, process-oriented operations and to shops which have never heard of the concept. This affords them the unique opportunity (unique, at least until Dell comes along with their own answer) to press their wares both on traditional consumers of operations management software and introduce it to new candidates for such software.

As to the question of whether or not Automated Operations is any good at all that it purports to do (which is quite a list), that is still open. With the Opsware acquisition, most recent of those mentioned above and perhaps most key, having only been completed in September, it's difficult to credit the degree of seamless integration the product promises. So is this just a half-baked, cobbled together bit of fluff designed to compete with the ops management heavies for a slice of the pie, or is it a well-conceived, thought out, and implemented suite designed to ease ITIL implementation and increase efficiency in the IT organization? We'll have to wait for a few roll-outs to see, but the promise is powerful and the attraction of a single vendor solution in this area is clear.