The maturing of BMC

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: SCOTT CRAWFORD ON NETWORK/SYSTEMS
MANAGEMENT
10/12/05
Today's focus: The maturing of BMC

Dear networking.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* The BMC of the 21st century
* Links related to Network/Systems Management
* Featured reader resource
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Today's focus: The maturing of BMC

By Scott Crawford

Recently, my Enterprise Management Associates colleagues and I
spent time with BMC for an update on the company's progress over
the past year. Like many other vendors, BMC has had its
challenges in recovering from the dot-com heyday, but there is
much good news to report, particularly of its efforts over the
last couple of years.

The acquisition of Remedy in 2002 has obviously played a
significant role in BMC's turnaround since - but this should not
overshadow the fact that BMC has, at the same time, made
noteworthy progress toward the integration of its entire asset
family in what appears to be an increasingly coherent whole.

These assets include the 2004 acquisitions of knowledge
management company Magic
<http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/083005-bmc.html?rl> and
desktop and server management software vendor Marimba
<http://www.networkworld.com/news/2004/0429bmc.html?rl>. BMC
also enhanced its identity management suite with the
acquisitions of Calendra
<http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/011705bmc.html?rl> and
Open Network
<http://www.networkworld.com/news/2005/0323bmcbuys.html?rl>
earlier this year.

BMC's offerings form the basis of eight BMC-described "routes to
value":
* Service-level management.
* Service impact and event management.
* Incident and problem management.
* Infrastructure and application management.
* Asset management and discovery.
* Capacity management and provisioning.
* Identity management.
* Change and configuration management.

Central to this strategy is BMC's configuration management
database (CMDB), a product sector that has become important to
IT management standardization initiatives, such as the
Information Technology Infrastructure Library. In many ways,
BMC's Atrium CMDB is one of the most mature CMDBs in terms of
vision.

BMC's federated approach to the CMDB recognizes the reality of
IT in many organizations, where configuration information may be
distributed among a number of sources. This places substantial
demands on the ability of the CMDB to integrate across a range
of domain-specific configuration solutions, with significant
implications for change and configuration processes. BMC is
consequently able to take liberal advantage of its ownership of
Remedy as the anchor of IT service process management in many
shops, but the Marimba brand also plays a leading role, as do
the company's overall service model and its business impact
analysis tools.

The BMC approach to CMDBs recognizes the important role identity
information plays in configuration and service management. The
company is one of a handful of CMDB vendors that look at
mainframe assets, which is still a very important area for most
large IT shops.

A number of other recent developments include the progressive
rebranding of BMC's Patrol products to become BMC's Performance
Manager portfolio - a much-needed rejuvenation of the Patrol
brand. Still expected are ways in which the BMC portfolio can be
leveraged across IT and organizational silos to integrate
application-oriented service delivery vehicles such as
services-oriented architectures, as well as ways in which BMC's
integrated approach can be leveraged to further security and
regulatory compliance management.

We'll be keeping an eye on these and other trends as BMC seeks
to carry forward the momentum of the past few years. If you're a
customer, we'd be most interested in hearing about your
experience of the "twenty-first century" BMC. Drop me a line
<mailto:scrawford@enterprisemanagement.com> and let me know if
BMC's routes to value are helping you get where you want to go.

The top 5: Today's most-read stories

1. Symantec AntiVirus Scan Engine has serious bug
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlnsm8484>
2. Bechtel says move to IPv6 is all about business
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlnsm8605>
3. You won't find this book on Oprah's list
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlnsm8486>
4. IETF effort promises fewer net failures
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlnsm8485>
5. The ABCs of SOA <http://www.networkworld.com/nlnsm8606>

_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Scott Crawford

Scott Crawford, CISSP, is a Senior Analyst focused on IT
security, systems and application management with Enterprise
Management Associates in Boulder, Colo., an analyst and market
research firm focusing exclusively on all aspects of enterprise
management systems and services. The former information security
chief for the International Data Centre of the Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization in Vienna, Austria,
Crawford has also been a systems professional with the
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research as well as
Emerson, HP, and other organizations in both public and private
sectors. He can be reached at
<mailto:scrawford@enterprisemanagement.com>
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Coradiant
Improve Web Performance; Monitor Your Web Applications

Decrease support costs and service your customers better.
Download the whitepaper, "Building the Ideal Strategy" - Web
Application Performance Monitoring, to learn more. This
whitepaper provides a detailed look at a new class of
Web-monitoring technologies - Real-User monitoring - which
offers a more sophisticated real-time view of the experience of
each user and quickly points to the cause(s) of errors and site
brownouts. Download the free whitepaper.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=117321
_______________________________________________________________
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