Voyence's network configuration management adds another piece to EMC's IT service management puzzle.EMC announced Oct. 30 it would acquire Voyence, a network change and configuration management provider, to quicken EMCs march into the IT service management arena.
The privately held companys VoyenceControl software automates the management of multivendor network device configuration. It already offers integration with the EMC Smarts root-cause analysis fault manager.
"Seventy-eight percent of [IT infrastructure] problems are caused by misconfigurations. If customers can address those in advance, they are in a much better position to prevent problems from happening and improve overall end-to-end service availability," said Bob Quillan, senior director of product marketing for EMC Smarts, in Santa Clara, Calif.
Read more here about the VoyenceControl configuration management software.
EMC, which would not disclose the price it paid for Voyence, sees its latest acquisition as the "perfect puzzle piece" for its existing Resource Management Software Group, Quillan said.
"Its a great fit. They align nicely with the way Smarts markets its products around larger enterprises and service providers. Both have very scalable architectures and can support thousands of devices. Smarts and Voyence share a lot of similarities in go-to-market, technology, and so on," he said.
The Voyence acquisition brings EMCs Resource Management Software Group into deeper competition with Hewlett-Packards software unit, which recently outlined its own ITSM strategy. HP also recently acquired network device configuration management with Opsware.
The existing integration with EMC Smarts allows IT managers to integrate network configuration change events detected by VoyenceControl into Smarts to solve problems caused by misconfiguration of network devices. From within the Smarts console, users can also access VoyenceControls configuration repository and initiate steps to solve problems caused by those misconfigurations.
While EMC plans to continue to market VoyenceControl as a stand-alone product, it also plans to implement further integration with its Application Delivery Manager, which can discover multitiered applications and their dependencies on infrastructure elements.
"Each has a repository. We can populate a [configuration management database] and have a broader configuration management repository. Thats the next big opportunity we can go after," Quillan said. VoyenceControl has its own discovery engine focused on network devices, he said, adding, "Then that closed loop process between problem management and change and configuration management is an area of further investment." VoyenceControl is also integrated with BMC Softwares Remedy help desk system.
In addition to the IT service management boost Voyence brings to EMC Smarts, VoyenceControl also brings compliance capabilities to the table through its ability to analyze network device security compliance. It can be used to keep network devices up-to-date with the latest security policies and patches.
Voyence, founded in 2000, will become a part of EMCs Resource Management Software Group, and its CEO Susan Nash will report to Chris Gahagan, RMSG senior vice president. The acquisition is already closed.
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