BMC acquisition boosts analytics capabilities

BMC outlines automated problem resolution ambitions following ProactiveNet buy

Fresh from completing its purchase of ProactiveNet earlier this week, IT management software specialist BMC has unveiled details about how it plans to integrate its new acquisition's analytics software into its portfolio.

Tom Bishop, chief technology officer at BMC, said that the deal "plugged a gap" in the company's analytics portfolio, adding that ProactiveNet's ability to collect data from a variety of sources across the IT infrastructure would give IT managers much better oversight and help them identify trends that could lead to IT problems, effectively providing them with "an early warning system".

"Businesses now have a lot of data about their IT environment, but the challenge is turning that data into usable knowledge," he explained. "That is what ProactiveNet's analytics capabilities enables."

With ProactiveNet having previously operated as a BMC partner the company expects to have few problems integrating the two portfolios at the data level. However, Bishop said BMC also has more ambitious plans to increase the automation of several IT processes by tying ProactiveNet's analytical capabilities together with BMC's existing problem resolution and incident management functionality.

"We want to tie the analytical information into our problem management process flows so that we can begin to solve some of the more common IT problems in an automated manner," he explained. "I won’t say we will automate everything as that would be a case of over selling and under delivering, but there is the opportunity to automate more problem resolution processes."

Bishop added that integration work would begin immediately with a view to delivering the first integrated product sets within six months.

The move was welcomed by Bola Rotibi of analysts Ovum who argued that BMC's new analytics capabilities would appeal to customers. "There is a lot of interest in analytics at the moment across the IT management space and we are really seeing the functionality that has always been used on customer data being transferred to apply to operational data," she explained. "IT managers need this more in-depth information if they are to solve the problems of high failure rates and this deal makes a lot of sense for BMC, particularly in the wake of its acquisition last year of [problem management software specialist] Identity. "