EMC Buys BMC’s Storage Management Software Line

Eyeing more customers in the corporate space, EMC Wednesday announced it has purchased the storage management software line of BMC Software .

The acquisition of BMC Software’s PATROL Storage Manager software is the key piece in the companies’ global sales, marketing, and technology partnership.
EMC plans to ultimately eradicate the product and move BMC customers to EMC’s own storage management line, ControlCenter.

In turn, BMC plans to resell EMC’s ControlCenter family of products as its exclusive storage resource management line through its MarketZone sales program. Financial terms of the deal were not made public.

The move is another sign of ongoing consolidation in the storage software industry, and signals more merging to come between software companies and product lines, particularly in the realm of storage management software, which oversees data flow on the network. Like EMC, rivals including Computer Associates , IBM , and HP are trying lure more customers and market share with their storage management software.

For Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC, the deal means deeper penetration into the corporate infrastructure of major enterprises where Houston-based BMC already has a solid footprint. BMC will now have a successful storage management software line to offer along with its enterprise systems management and services
offerings.

“The partnership with BMC marks our first reseller arrangement with an independent software provider to market EMC ControlCenter as their storage resource management offering on an exclusive basis,” states Joe Tucci, EMC’s President and CEO. “Customers will benefit both from BMC’s deep knowledge at the server and application level and from EMC’s expertise at the storage and storage network level, providing an end-to-end management solution handling nearly every layer of the IT infrastructure.”

Enterprise Storage Group analyst Steve Kenniston applauds the play.

“This deal is very good for both companies,” says Kenniston. “BMC needs to be able to fulfill the storage related commitments they had, and EMC, since today they don’t have a server/networking management strategy/story, it makes a really good fit. The other potential OEMs have that strategy, and it would have given them access to try to replace BMC’s product. Here there isn’t that risk. So, BMC gets to fulfill the commitments they have to customers with good product and technology, and EMC gets to work with more customers, and they will roll ControlCenter into these shops as a complement to PATROL.”

EMC and BMC also agreed that EMC will support BMC in providing maintenance service and support to all current PATROL Storage Manager customers. Also, BMC will be able to offer PATROL Storage Manager customers equivalent EMC ControlCenter licenses in order to provide a migration or upgrade path from PATROL Storage Manager.

This story originally appeared on Internet News.

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