BMC Software Simplifies Application Dependency Mapping

BMC Software (NASDAQ: BMC) today announced the availability of the latest release of the BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping solution with collaborative application mapping. With this new capability, BMC drastically reduces the time, effort and cost of mapping multi-tier applications to the IT infrastructure supporting them by simplifying both the process and technology. Using these maps, IT can better understand how applications and infrastructure work together to deliver the services that enterprises depend on.

IT has previously been dependent on the owners of business applications to provide large amounts of detailed data about applications. With this new collaborative application mapping capability, application owners can now provide a small amount of basic information, such as the application type and host names. With this data, IT can use the BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping solution’s unique search and query-building capabilities to create a dynamic application map, which is automatically updated and maintained whenever there are changes in the IT environment. In contrast with other discovery products, all of this is accomplished without the need for complex programming or substantial staff effort.

"The new Collaborative Application Mapping in BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping greatly accelerates the process of mapping applications,” said Michael Tomasiewicz, senior network and systems administrator at ConAgra Foods. "Working with our application owners has become much more efficient, and the ability to get their buy-in and feedback using shareable artifacts is a huge advantage. With BMC, we have improved the availability of critical business applications by eliminating our reliance on tribal knowledge to understand dependencies and the impact of proposed changes.”

As a foundational technology for Business Service Management (BSM), application discovery and the mapping of dependencies is critical for succeeding with strategic IT initiatives such as IT service management, data center automation and transformation, cloud computing and virtualization management, service impact management and service costing. Understanding complex application dependencies is a fundamental requirement for these initiatives. With the BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping solution, IT leaders have the insight they need to make the right planning choices, safely manage changes, prioritize support and understand the real costs of IT.

"Application dependency mapping tools provide the capability to discover server and application dependencies, which result in improved visibility in support of various data center activities,” said Ronni Colville, vice president and distinguished analyst, IT operations group at Gartner. "Manual application mapping is a resource intensive activity that requires a continuous assessment process, creating an information tug-of-war between operations and application support. Enterprises need a solution to stabilize this phenomenon.”

BMC Atrium Discovery and Dependency Mapping is part of BMC’s comprehensive, service-driven architecture for managing IT. The addition of collaborative application mapping provides capabilities that have previously been absent from the market. The new capabilities not only enable customers to save time and resources, but also expand the power of BSM to a much broader set of business critical applications.

"BMC pioneered the important connection between IT and the business with BSM and helped to make it a reality through Atrium,” said John Peters, vice president of research and development at BMC. "Understanding multi-tier application dependencies is critical to understanding how IT resources support business services and how IT supports their business customers. Until now, this has been an elusive goal for most vendors despite their claims. By streamlining the interaction between application owners and IT, we have created a pragmatic approach to build ongoing visibility into complex application dependencies and have changed the game for our customers by helping them make bigger contributions to their businesses in a way that no other IT management provider can match.”

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Business thrives when IT runs smarter, faster and stronger. That’s why the most demanding IT organizations in the world rely on BMC Software across distributed, mainframe, virtual and cloud environments. Recognized as the leader in Business Service Management, BMC offers a comprehensive approach and unified platform that helps IT organizations cut cost, reduce risk and drive business profit. For the four fiscal quarters ended September 30, 2011, BMC revenue was approximately $2.2 billion. Visit www.bmc.com for more information.

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