BMC claims lead in service management
BMC Software made another move into the business service management (BSM) space on Monday with the launch of the latest version of its Atrium Configuration Management Database (CMDB), and a new Automated Discovery product.
BMC has been busy re-inventing itself over the last three years, moving from systems management into BSM, and has been busy buying companies that will give it the tools to provide a complete BSM solution. The highest-profile purchase was the $375m (£200m) purchase of Remedy in 2002.
The company is aiming to provide a comprehensive set of tools and services to make it easier for companies to run, manage and account for their system assets. BMC is also committed to an open strategy, mixing its own products with those from the widest range of vendors.
BMC's Automated Discovery works with Atrium CMDB 2.0, launched on Monday, to model all of an organisation's IT-supporting elements, from technology through business processes to people. According to BMC, the aim "is to deliver a single, unified, business-relevant view into the IT environment".
These "foundation technologies" deliver a level of insight into how IT supports the business "that is not available from any other company", BMC claims.
"This is the result of a three-year strategic business policy," BMC's European director for enterprise data management business, Jonathan Priestley, told ZDNet UK.
Most organisations "are running a combination of Web services and 'new-age' composite applications," said Priestley. "The problem is that composite applications are structurally very weak." The aim is to give organisations the ability to manage their applications in a structured way.
The new architecture builds a service-oriented abstraction level (SOAL) so that organisations can build a comprehensive view of their systems and assets and the way they relate to each other. Organisations get a dashboard which covers systems management and can provide a business view so that managers can be notified of all relevant changes made when systems change.
"A system manager can make a change to a system without being aware that the change has impacted another system which could be costing the company thousands or millions of pounds," said Priestley.
Organisations that are successfully executing BSM can enjoy a massive improvement in their ability to understand and manage their IT from a business perspective, BMC claimed.