BMC delivers strong Q4, ups outlook, teams with Red Hat

BMC Software reported strong fiscal fourth quarter results as the company's focus on managing data centers and cloud computing deployments paid off. Separately, BMC forged a cloud computing partnership with Red Hat.

The company reported fourth quarter earnings of $123 million, or 67 cents a share, on revenue of $562 million, up 14 percent from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were 78 cents a share. Wall Street was looking for earnings of 77 cents a share on revenue of $538.7 million.

For fiscal 2011, BMC reported earnings of $456 million, or $2.50 a share, on revenue of $2.06 billion. Bookings for the year were up 13 percent from the previous year.

As for the outlook, BMC projected fiscal 2012 non-GAAP earnings of $3.21 to $3.31 a share. Revenue growth is expected to be in the high single digits to low double digits. Wall Street was looking for earnings of $3.23 a share.

Separately, BMC and Red Hat expanded their partnership. Under the deal, BMC's Cloud Lifecycle Management software will be integrated with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Enterprise Virtualization Manager. both companies will also work together on cloud integrations via Red Hat's CloudForms, which was recently launched.