BMC Software today unveiled BMC Service Automation, a set of next-generation solutions that automate the lifecycle of IT-delivered business services, from provisioning and configuration to maintenance and governance/compliance, across a heterogeneous set of systems.

This capability has long been highly desired by IT executives and represents a significant step beyond traditional data center automation, which focuses on server provisioning as opposed to creating and delivering business services. According to Gartner: “Automating IT operations management processes continues to be a priority for executives who are measured on improving IT operations efficiencies, yet face increasing IT infrastructure complexity and demands from their business.”

Skyrocketing operational costs and administrative workloads are consuming upwards of 80 percent of IT resources, most of it spent on time-consuming, error-prone, manual tasks. Driven by the customer’s unique standards, policies and processes, BMC Service Automation unifies routine IT tasks into a solution set that leverages existing customer investments for break-though gains in operational efficiency and flexibility. These integrated, automated solutions include coordination and execution of all provisioning and update duties, virtual and physical server configuration, network infrastructure configuration and reconfiguration, and the packaging and deployment of any software, including operating systems, application infrastructure, web content and security patches.

Customers deploying BMC Service Automation can manage their entire IT infrastructure, ranging from edge devices, the network and servers, to the applications that provide the services demanded by the business. Business responsiveness, compliance and availability are dramatically improved. In addition to these major performance benefits, customers have seen 90 percent reductions in the time and costs associated with performing common, routine tasks.

"BMC Service Automation provides additional capabilities in our drive to simplify IT for our customers," said Rick Becker, vice president of solutions, Dell Product Group. "The automation of IT ensures that repetitive tasks and processes are accomplished reliably and enables scarce manpower to be refocused toward developing new services instead of solely on the maintenance of existing infrastructure."

Juan Carlos Soto, vice president of market development, Sun Microsystems, added: "Customers need agile infrastructure and policy driven, automated processes to reduce data center costs. Sun's Dynamic Infrastructure Suite and Solaris 10 OS, working in combination with BMC's Service Automation, provides customers with innovative solutions for capacity-on-demand service provisioning, virtualization management and release life cycle management. Enterprises that value flexibility and the ability to aggressively control IT management costs will benefit substantially from BMC’s offering."

In contrast, many IT organizations historically have required weeks or even months to perform the many steps needed to set up a new application in a data center, including ensuring component capability, provisioning servers, proper process and approvals, and the installation and loading of operating systems and applications. Today, however, these organizations have far fewer resources to effectively execute business mandates. In addition, the business demands of adapting to changing competitive threats and market opportunities require a flexibility that has been elusive for many organizations.

Since its creation by BMC earlier this decade, Business Service Management (BSM) has become a leading approach to aligning IT and business, both through the creation of best practices and enhancing the impact IT infrastructure has on the business. BMC Service Automation takes the next logical step by allowing these best practices to be performed automatically.

“IT is not about managing devices and pieces of technology, it’s about delivering the services the business needs when it needs them,” said Jim Grant, senior vice president and general manager of BMC’s Enterprise Service Management business unit. “While the average server provisioning solution can easily configure individual servers, BMC Service Automation allows customers to deploy and manage true, complex business services, not just collections of devices. This unique ability accelerates delivery of new services in near real-time, to accelerate business performance and responsiveness.”

Brian Byun, vice president of global partners and solutions at VMware, said: “As customers roll out deployment automation across physical/virtual environments, we believe that BMC Software’s Service Automation solution can reduce IT operational costs and accelerate the delivery of new IT services in datacenters virtualized using VMware Infrastructure.”

“The problem is that most data center automation offerings have a lot of built-in limitations, not the least of which is the lack of a larger IT management architecture such as Business Service Management,” said Paul Avenant, vice president, BMC Service Management. “In addition, these offerings are tightly associated with specific platforms, ignoring customer demand for true multi-vendor solutions. With BMC, there are no hardware, server or platform limitations, nor are there any technology agendas to push.”

In related news, BMC also announced today that it has acquired privately held Emprisa Networks, a leader in smart network compliance, change and configuration management and automation solutions. With this acquisition, BMC offers customers the only platform independent, multi-vendor network configuration automation solution available in today’s market.

Source: Gartner, “IT Operations Run Book Automation Experiences Continued Market Growth”, D. Williams, March 2007

About BMC Service Automation
BMC Service Automation combines configuration automation, IT best practices, and integrations to the rest of BMC’s BSM portfolio. As such, Service Automation is a super-set of device-focused data center automation. While data center automation offerings are essentially limited to server provisioning, BMC Service Automation delivers a much broader and deeper IT and business service delivery capability.

Platform agnostic and heterogeneous, BMC Service Automation addresses all of the elements required to automate the delivery of business services, including the network and third-parties such as storage. A comprehensive approach that can be deployed in manageable steps, BMC Service Automation allows customers to leverage their existing investments, avoiding the need to rip and replace current systems and processes. BMC’s unique approach assembles open solutions supported by resilient, reusable processes, resulting in a manageable journey towards fully automated and efficient IT operations.

BMC’s Service Automation includes the following solutions:

• Discovery and mapping of the complete IT environment, including its relationships to business processes and transactions
• Full-scale Configuration Automation capability across network devices, physical and virtual servers, and client systems
• Change Management to support configuration policy adherence and process automation
• Orchestration and automation of activities supporting IT processes, reducing errors and expenses in task execution across operational processes and toolsets
• Automation of Continuous Compliance, including audit and enforcement of standard configurations across heterogeneous IT environments