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BMC Software will continue to push ahead on its Business Service Management strategy May 22, when it introduces the integration of several of its product offerings with its Configuration Management Database.
BMC will take its BSM message directly to IT operations organizations, rather than the service desk, and seek to show the advantages its automated management tools bring with improved integration.
“IT operations is not an afterthought to BSM. The IT operations group is focused on managing core parts of the infrastructure that deliver the services the business depends on from IT,” said Tom Bishop, chief technology officer at BMC, in Houston. “IT operations has to tie in a more integrated way infrastructure and applications management to focus on whats important to the business.”
Toward that end, BMCs latest round of integration focuses on infrastructure, application, capacity and transaction management.
BMC specifically integrated its BMC Performance Manager and BMC Performance Assurance service-level management offering with its CMDB. BMC also enhanced its BMC Transaction Management Application Response Time, BMC Event Manager, BMC Service Level Manager and BMC Service Impact Manager to help make IT operations more responsive to business users, improve service levels and reduce operational costs.
At the same time, BMC added a pair of new tools, dubbed the BMC Transaction Management Root Cause Analysis and BMC Performance Assurance/Performance Exception Detector. Both are integrated with BMCs CMDB.
The latest integration builds on work BMC has already done to integrate its Remedy help desk and a handful of other products into the CMDB, but there is still more to be done, believes Stephen Elliot, research manager at IDC, in Framingham, Mass. “Its still a bit of a work in progress, but they are making some pretty good strides with their core integration strategy,” he said.
And while the intracompany integration is important, just as important is integration with existing management tool investments that customers have already made, Elliot added.
“From a customer perspective, you have to push on the non-BMC integrations, which quite frankly are just as important,” he said.
Thats especially true for BMC Performance Manager users at The Regence Group, a Blue Cross/Blue Shield carrier with IT operations in Salt Lake City, according to Craig Robin, systems programmer/administrator. “We have the new version [of Performance Manager], but it did not integrate with our Troux CMDB,” said Robin.
The Regence Group uses the agentless Performance Manager to keep tabs on about 1,200 to 1,300 servers. Robin said he is pleased with the work BMC did to streamline administration of the tool.
The new software releases and new tools are available now.