BMC Looks to Optimize Data Center

BMC Software on July 17 turned its attention to data center optimization when it launched updated releases of several acquired tools now integrated with each other.

BMC, which is based in Houston, updated BMC Virtualizer 2.5, BMC Performance Assurance 7.3 and added new workflow integrations in existing BMC Atrium Configuration Management Database, BMC Discovery, BMC Change and Configuration Management and BMC Performance Manager 2.1 to help customers better manage the entire process of consolidating servers and implementing virtualization.

“We’re delivering integration between [the former Remedy], our [former Marimba] configuration management, our next generation CMDB 2.0 and its definitive software library,” said Dave Wagner, director of solutions marketing at BMC in Bolton, Mass.

At the same time, for provisioning and deployment BMC has “extended our discovery beyond servers to include business processes, mainframes, storage, VMware or other virtual environments. Bare metal provisioning and patch management now span all server environments,” said Wagner.

To read more about BMC’s virtual server management efforts, click here.

For patch management, BMC specifically teamed up with Red Hat to offer the only third-party patch management for its implementation of Linux.

While most IT organizations have taken a silo approach to change management, with manual handoffs between different IT disciplines for each task in the process, BMC’s data center optimization thrust is designed to embed automated workflows from one IT group to another.

The intent is to streamline the process and insure more pertinent data is used in what BMC’s Wagner described as a “closed-loop process.”

“We found there is a life-cycle associated with data center resources like servers and applications. You need to know what you have and what it’s doing now, you need to build change plans, you need to change those environments and then you need to manage those environments ongoing,” Wagner said.

In surveying its own larger customers, BMC found a lack of appropriate planning, he added.

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