"Cassatt's marketing spiel uses more than a few buzzwords -- autonomic computing, service-oriented architecture and grid computing," Network World reported in 2004. "But what really interests the software company is the eventual convergence of these technologies. Cassatt is designing for an IT environment that will emerge over the next decade as more users adopt virtualization technologies, Coleman says. Today, users can begin to scale their IT environments with Linux clusters or blade servers. In a few years, software and hardware will mature enough that utility computing can become practical, he says. The problem is utility computing requires the metering of processing, network and storage capabilities, and the software doesn't exist to do that today, he adds."

"Imagine if we scale the number of hardware components that are operating from a couple of hundred to tens of thousands, and we take the few dozen applications being managed today and break those into tens of thousands of Web services," Coleman told Network World in 2004. "If all this is really going to happen, then the world needs an operations system, something that takes on most of the manual operation and the real-time administration of this technology, and takes out the need for a human to be in the loop.

Cassatt has more recently adopted the "cloud" buzzword to describe its technology, claiming that its software helps enterprises build private cloud networks. But the cloud management market is a busy one, with major players such as Cisco and VMware claiming to provide the infrastructure needed to build cloud networks. Cassatt reportedly secured by early 2007, but it apparently wasn't enough.