On Wednesday on February 29th, UC4′s senior solutions architect, Scott Wilson, will be conducting a complimentary live webinar where he will uncover three simple steps that companies can take with an automated solution to reduce application deployment time from days down to hours. Scott will introduce best practices for application release management and explain how you can bring agility to operations while overcoming common security and compliance obstacles.

During this 45 minute webinar, you will learn how to:

• Implement agile operations for continuous deployment
• Automate deployment in pre-production and production
• Improve end-to-end visibility into the software release process

Click here to register today before the all of the slots fill up!

So what does this mean for UC4 customers? Quite simply, it means life is going to get even easier when it comes to delivering custom applications, moving applications to the Cloud or implementing DevOps. With the acquisition of Ventum, UC4’s ONE Automation platform now has an end-to-end solution that unifies the release planning and control process with application deployment in testing, staging and production.

Already fully integrated, UC4’s application release automation solution now combines planning, control and automation. New features include:

• Application and component modeling minimizes failures by identifying unmet dependencies
• Test environment scheduling ensures required test and staging environments are available at the right time, preventing unnecessary project delays
• Centralized approval process eliminates errors and provides great visibility into the release process
• Resource conflict identification eliminates process resource contention

Check out the brief demo video below or download the new whitepaper, Empowering DevOps: Implementing a Real Application Release Automation Solution, to learn more about achieving seamless application deployment and maintenance across your infrastructure.

Through real-time monitoring of processes, applications, and the entire IT environment, UC4 matches your projected job plan against available resources, allocates resources on demand, and makes real-time decisions on job routing. By eliminating the need for manual intervention, UC4 not only saves you time, freeing you up for more strategic tasks, but it also reduces the errors that often accompany manual steps.

You can save up to 40% of your time next holiday season with a unified workload automation solution. To learn more about UC4’s offering, register for our upcoming webinar on Thursday, December 15th at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time: Workload Automation for the Less Planned, More On-demand World.

Also in celebration of the holiday, UC4 hosted a food drive to support Northwest Harvest, a local hunger relief agency. Since we all love a little healthy competition around here, we held a contest among departments to see which could bring in the most food in terms of weight – this year’s winner was the Development department. And in total, we raised more than 1,500 lbs of food that will go toward feeding a lot of people this holiday season. Great work, team, thank you!

Happy Thanksgiving from your friends here at UC4!

Yesterday at Integrate, both AMC Theatres and Collective Brands added to our collective knowledge by sharing their real-world experiences with UC4. After wrapping up presentations from our best-in-class customers, Integrate dove into the training portion of the program and provided five technical tracks on several of our solutions including the Automation Engine, Insight and Decision. Kudos to our customers on their inquisitive quest to improve their UC4 IQ.*

A huge hit at Integrate was the UC4 Support Lab – set up with plenty of laptops and top-notch technical experts – which was constantly packed with customers that wanted demos, hands-on support, and daily-use tips and tricks they could take back to the office.

To close out the 10th Annual Integrate conference, UC4 pulled together a video montage from a collection of photos submitted by attendees throughout the week based on the “What Do You See?” theme. We see UC4 users leveraging ONE Automation to enable their business to do more than ever.

Be sure to stay tuned to our blog for details on Integrate 2012!

*If you’re interested in more training opportunities on UC4 Software you can find a list of scheduled training classes on our full web site.

• CBS Interactive
• Comcast
• Drexel
• Fender
• Hofstra University
• John Deere
• PG&E
• Stein Mart
• tw telecom
• University of Alabama
• Woolworths

The full agenda can be downloaded online and presentations will be made available to all UC4 customers after the event on our Support Zone.  John Deere’s presentation focused on the emerging hot topic of predictive analytics and intelligent monitoring to prevent errors using UC4’s Predictive Analytics.  Using UC4, John Deere creates custom alerts for end-users so they’re informed about potential issues before they impact the system performance and determine the root cause of impending problems before they ever take place.  They’re a great example of a company who is “rethinking IT automation.”  Check back later for more updates on customer presentations from AMC Theatres and Collective Brands as well as the top questions and answers being addressed real-time in our onsite Support Lab at Integrate 2011.

For those of you not at Integrate, here is a short video clip of UC4 CEO, Jason Liu, discussing ONE Automation:

Following Jason and Ken, UC4 customer keynote Tom Flitter of Total Administrative Services Corp (TASC) addressed the crowd. TASC relies on UC4 to support their corporate growth initiatives of driving IT to service models.  Tom provided several pieces of practical advice for fellow customers seeking to scale their IT operations staff in support of more dynamic and service-oriented business requirements.

Immediately following the customer keynote was a Market Overview of IT Process Automation discussion led by Forrester Research, Inc.’s analysts Glenn O’Donnell and J.P. Garbani.  The analysts discussed Forrester’s recent Q3 2011 report on IT Process Automation, in which UC4 is positioned ahead of the pack in terms of IT process automation capabilities.

The morning ended with a panel discussion moderated by Forrester on the topic of the Future of IT Process Automation.  UC4 customers, Boeing Employees Credit Union (BECU), Con-Way, and Air Products and Chemicals, staffed the panel to provide insights from the front lines.

Check back tomorrow for a recap of the customer presentation topics and favorite sessions.  In the meantime, here are a few snapshots from the UC4 Innovation Station where customers are submitting leading technical innovations and best practices all in the name of “Rethinking IT Automation” — and for a chance to win an iPad!

While winning a trip to the Indy 500 would be awesome – it isn’t the only incentive to attend Integrate 2011! Our 10^th annual Integrate event is structured specifically with you – our customer –  in mind, and filled with educational seminars, hands-on training, and dozens of best practices that you can take back to integrate into your company’s processes.

Here are the top technical reasons our customers are attending:

• Access to 20+ hours of hands-on product training from UC4’s senior consultants and developers
• Connecting with nearly 200 customers to share best practices and ideas
• Networking with the UC4 executive management team to share experience and feedback with the highest level UC4 decision-makers
• Gathering insight from industry experts on new technologies such as cloud computing, virtualization, and complex event processing
• Becoming a UC4 Certified Professional

On the social side, there will be plenty of time to network and connect with consultants, developers and fellow users at cocktail receptions or during the hosted dinner cruise. Plus, Integrate is taking place this week in Fort Lauderdale, Florida – who couldn’t use a little more sunshine in their lives, right?

Follow @UC4Software on Twitter to stay up-to-date on the latest happenings this week at #Integrate2011.  You can also check back here for live updates and photos from the event.

The UC4 Service Level Governor allows businesses to gain real-time visibility, manage their SLAs proactively and manage IT to business requirements.

Our Fortune 500 customers are jumping at the chance to implement. When we previewed the UC4 Service Level Governor for one of our largest customers, a major e-commerce and payment company, they had only one question: “How soon can we get our hands on it?”

Another customer, a giant global bank, called the UC4 Service Level Governor a “game changer” because it not only reports on SLAs but helps them analyze, predict service level violations and make responsive decisions and changes to head off problems before they happen.

Likewise, the industry analyst community is very excited about the UC4 Service Level Governor, which they see as a step toward proactive monitoring or true “Service Governance.” They also told us UC4 is light years ahead of our competitors.

Learn about the future of workload automation with UC4’s ONE Automation and how the UC4 Service Level Governor combines real-time monitoring and analysis with intelligent decision making for higher service levels.