Sidebar: BMC Readies Software for Identifying, Mapping IT Assets

Computerworld - BMC Software Inc. today will expand its line of change and configuration management products by announcing three tools for identifying IT assets and mapping how they're connected to one another.
The three products will be part of a new IT Discovery Suite offering from BMC. One of the tools, called Configuration Discovery, is designed to help users define how their IT assets are configured. That product is due to appear next month after Houston-based BMC closes its planned acquisition of Marimba Inc., said Harold Goldberg, vice president of marketing at BMC.
In addition to Configuration Discovery, BMC plans to ship tools called Discovery Express and Topology Discovery in September, Goldberg said. All three products will populate a database of configuration management information, he added.
Peter Pace, manager of change management for Web sites run by United Air Lines Inc., said he plans to evaluate the new tools when they're available. United has used BMC's Change Management 5.0 software for more than a year to make predictions about how a system will perform if part of it is taken down for routine maintenance -- a common occurrence that has caused disruptions in the past, Pace said.
BMC acquired the change management tool as part of its 2002 purchase of Peregrine Systems Inc.'s Remedy Corp. unit. United's adoption of the software is having a positive impact and has even led to end users giving IT staffers congratulatory handshakes for having more control over systems, Pace said. "We're now viewed as an enabler of getting things done," not an obstacle, he said.
Robert McNeil, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc., said the products being unveiled by BMC fit well into its Business Service Management initiative, which he compared to the on-demand computing strategies of competitors such as Computer Associates International Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and IBM's Tivoli Software unit.
Pricing hasn't been set for the IT Discovery Suite products, BMC said.