BMC Software Inc. announced Monday it will acquire identity management vendor Calendra for $33 million, a move that the company expects will help it deliver a more complete identity management suite of products.
“Historically wed been a provisioning and administration product based in a distributed environment and [spread] across all kinds of applications,” said Cindy Sterling, director of business development for the Identity Management Business Unit at BMC. “But the two areas wed seen increased requests for were Web-based business identity management abilities and the support of diverse directory sources for identity management.”
The Houston-based company, which is focused on helping companies use technology to drive their business services, has been in the identity management space since 1999, when it purchased New Dimension Software Ltd. and its Control-SA product, which is now BMCs primary identity management offering.
“Many of the demands on software vendors in this space have changed,” said Sterling. “That was the driver for the acquisition of Calendra.”
In addition to providing Web application support, BMC believes Paris-based Calendras workflow capabilities could greatly enhance its own identity management line. For example, Calendra gives companies the ability to quickly customize access rights to business applications, delegate those rights, and empower users to self-request access rights, which BMC did not offer previously.
Roberta Witty, an analyst for Gartner Inc., believes workflow was a core component that BMC failed to address in the past and was the one tool missing from its offerings.
“They quickly fell out of favor because they didnt have a workflow product,” said Witty. “Bringing in this piece really completes their identity management story and certainly makes them more competitive.”
Identity management solutions are also becoming a key component of compliance and auditing, particularly in regard to data access and protection requirements. In many cases, companies must be able to track who has access to data sources, when those sources are accessed and what is done with that information. Calendras products allow for easier administration of those access parameters.
“The Calendra acquisition enhances what were already doing in the audit and compliance space by allowing a traceable and trackable delegation of access rights,” said Sterling. “Architecturally, this was a strong fit for BMC, and the product line was a strong fit as well.”
The acquisition is expected to close later this month, when the companies will immediately begin integrating their offerings. In addition, all of Calendras roughly 50 employees will join BMCs identity management organization.
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