BMC To Launch New Duo

Derived from BMC's acquisition of IT Masters in late March, the new products include BMC Service Impact Manager and BMC Event Manager, which were previously sold together as MasterCell by IT Masters, said Mark Levy, director of product management for service management solutions at BMC, Houston.

Since BMC has split MasterCell into two separate products, solution providers will have more flexibility in selling the technology, said Levy.

For example, solution providers could target BMC Event Manager at midsize customers that have yet to develop a service management strategy, then later add BMC Service Impact Manager, Levy said.

"We're setting up a pricing mechanism specifically designed for the channel that allows for lower entry price points," he said.

BMC Service Impact Manager defines the relationship between business services and the physical IT assets that support them, creating models that help end users visualize the connections, Levy said.

The tool also includes root-cause analysis capabilities that identify trouble spots on the network, he said.

Customers can also use the tool's modeling capabilities to create "what if" scenarios to evaluate the impact network changes would have on service performance, said John Siniawski, senior partner at Renovance, a management consultant and service provider based in Chicago.

"You're able to create models to see what happens if other problems come up down the line," he said.

By tying network components to specific services, such as order processing, human resources or payroll, the tool helps IT departments prioritize their work, Levy said.

"If there are three people in an IT department and 15 servers are down, we can tell them which 12 they can ignore," he said.

BMC Event Manager collects and correlates availability and performance data from network components and provides role-based views to end users. It can then feed the data to BMC Service Impact Manager, which also integrates with event management systems from BMC competitors such as Hewlett-Packard or IBM Tivoli, Levy said.

BMC Event Manager and BMC Service Impact Manager enable business service management across BMC's other product lines, including Patrol systems management, Mainview mainframe management and Remedy IT service and help-desk management software.

A starter kit for BMC Service Impact Manager and management of 300 service components starts at $80,000. Additional bundles for 50 service components cost $12,000. A typical business service runs on 100 to 300 service components, according to Levy.

BMC Event Manager is priced starting at $50,000.