Big victory today for the growing number of voices trumpeting the benefits of Service Level Automation; IDC has defined a category of products specifically entitled Service Level Automation in its recent paper entitled Utility Computing: A Current Analysis of the Evolution. There are two vendors in the category today. (I'll let you guess who--one has the initial C, the other IBM...)
What is really cool about this is that it validates the need for systems that focus not on infrastructure automation per se (e.g. automating deployment processes, automating server creation, etc.), but that focus on the needs of the business and their applications and services. Sure, server virtualization, metering and billing, and so on are still important in a utility computing environment, but the concept is not complete unless something is monitoring your quality of service, and making adjustments as necessary to maintain compliance at minimal cost.
Of course, every so-called "policy-based" automation solution, no matter how single-product focused will probably now claim this title. But since you've been reading this blog, you know better than to fall into that trap...right? :)
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