BMC Enhances Patrol Software

BMC's Enablement Release for Patrol version 7 includes features such as an updated agent, enhanced security and compatibility with the latest vendor platforms such as Microsoft's Windows XP and .Net platform and SuSE Linux Enterprise Server. BMC officials say the new Patrol 7 solutions are being made available in a phased approach, with separate releases for the various components.

"It's a set of rolling releases where we're bringing together tighter integration of data and events and allowing many of these products to leverage each others strengths," says Sean Duclaux, director of product marketing at BMC. "It's really about creating a foundation of data sharing between products in the Patrol 7 family."

The advanced Patrol 7 infrastructure is designed to give customers a simpler deployment, a common communication infrastructure and common repository and reporting capabilities. The new Patrol agent technology has APIs that power data sharing between the various components of the Patrol product family and prior BMC software releases. The updated agent is also designed to make installation of the new Patrol 7 solutions simpler and faster.

"What this means to our customers and partners is that they can very easily and quickly install or upgrade their environment to take advantage of the new Patrol 7 functionality," Duclaux says. "Any knowledge module or add-on solutions from either BMC or a partner is automatically Patrol 7 enabled because the agent is backward-compatible. We're not going to ask our partners or resellers to do any work in that sense."

The new set of releases also includes enhanced security by offering customers can now select different security features, such as encryption or digital signatures, as well as multiple levels of IT security protocols depending on the customer's size and industry type. In addition, Patrol now supports new operating system platforms, including SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 7 for IBM zSeries mainframes and the latest Microsoft .NET initiatives and Microsoft Windows XP. Duclaux says BMC has seen an increase in demand for Linux-based solutions from customers, especially on the mainframe. He adds that BMC has been working closely with Microsoft on .Net development as well.