BMC Bolsters Middleware Portfolio with MQSoftware Buy

BMC Software announced it has acquired privately held MQSoftware, a leader in the middleware management and enterprise application transaction management markets.

The acquisition, announced on Aug. 10, expands BMC’s Business Service Management platform, which already provides customers with comprehensive views of their mainframe and distributed systems, to include their entire middleware infrastructure and high-value business transactions it supports, BMC officials said. BMC did not disclose financial details of the transaction.

Enterprises rely on middleware for communication between mainframe and distributed environments. However, IT departments typically monitor, diagnose and address middleware and business transaction issues in silos, BMC said. And middleware is the cornerstone for integrating disparate systems across the enterprise to deliver business services, the company noted.

Indeed, a recent BMC survey showed that 92 percent of large IT shops use WebSphere MQ middleware to help deliver the business services, while 66 percent of IT shops in general reported using WebSphere MQ as a crucial part of their IT infrastructure.

“The MQSoftware acquisition further strengthens BMC’s cross-enterprise solution set and underscores our commitment to deliver a unified Business Service Management offering that allows customers to reduce complexity and cost,” said Bill Miller, president of BMC’s Mainframe Service Management business unit, in a statement. “It’s clear that removing the silos around messaging middleware and transaction monitoring will lead to significant savings for our customers.”

With the acquisition of MQSoftware, BMC now offers a unified solution for monitoring messaging middleware and associated business transactions across the enterprise. This acquisition enables BMC to help its customer base reduce costs up to 30 percent by eliminating monitoring silos for transactions and messaging middleware; reduce downtime 90 percent or more by unifying transaction and messaging middleware performance monitoring across platforms and technologies; and improve staff productivity up to 40 percent by simplifying management tasks, BMC officials said.

Of the deal, Gartner analyst Milind Govekar said, "BMC Software's acquisition of MQSoftware will provide it with improved application management capabilities, especially for WebSphere, where it has lagged." In addition, Govekar said, "The MQSoftware buy provides BMC with credible and proven technology to defend and grow its installed base in this area."

The Gartner report on the acquisition also said:

"MQSoftware's two biggest sellers are Q Pasa, an application performance and availability monitoring product for WebSphereMQ, WebSphere, and Tibco middleware, and Q Nami, an application transaction and topology tracing product. MQSoftware has more than 300 customers for its software products and about twice that number for its training and services offering, with nearly 70% of those in the U.S. Q Pasa and Q Nami both support mainframe and distributed systems environments."

In addition, Govekar said, "Gartner expects BMC to sell its products into MQSoftware's installed base and MQSoftware products into its own base." Moreover, integration between MQSoftware's products and BMC's Mainview console is already in place, since BMC is a reseller of Q Nami, he added.