BACS goes on Patrol with BMC

BACS, the UK's largest clearing house, is looking to further improve the centralised management of its multi-vendor network by becoming one of the first users of BMC Software's integrated systems management application, Patrol 2000.

BACS is responsible for clearing financial transactions such as cheques, direct debits and standing orders for 40,000 UK organisations. "We have an extensive, heterogeneous network, combining ICL mainframes, Tandem processors, IBM RS/6000s, plus Windows NT for desktops and servers," said Rodney Inch, the company's head of special projects.

"As long ago as 1996 we recognised the need for a centralised systems management solution, and selected Command/Post from Boole & Babbage, who were later bought by BMC," he said. "Since then, we have also added BMC's performance management tool, BEST/1. For us, the key benefit of Patrol 2000 will be having a single, integrated systems management solution. Previously, we've had to develop interfaces between each application."

Inch is confident that the new system will be a success. "Our original implementation of Command/Post produced a payback within a year. This makes the case for the new product even more compelling," he said.

Patrol 2000 integrates Command/Post and BEST/1 with BMC's own Patrol application to provide a complete service level management solution, allowing businesses to measure service in terms of end user response, and publish reports on compliance against service level agreements.

With revenues of $1.3bn, Texas based BMC is the sixth largest software company in the world.

First appeared in Computing