BMC Software (NYSE:BMC) today extended its leadership in the heated service automation and virtualization management markets, announcing the immediate availability of Tripwire Enterprise for VMWare ESX Server, the industry’s first policy-based solution for ensuring compliance and security in this virtual computing environment.

Offered exclusively by BMC and Tripwire Inc., Tripwire Enterprise for VMware ESX Server helps IT achieve complete business service management, allowing enterprises to attain and maintain a known, trusted and compliant infrastructure state. Furthering the two companies’ strategic relationship to automate continuous compliance across heterogeneous IT environments, BMC customers will benefit from adding Tripwire for VMware ESX Server to their existing BMC Software Service Automation solutions.

“IT organizations require the same processes and controls within their virtual environments as they do in their physical ones,” said Mary Morgan, Senior Program Executive at BMC Software. “BMC and Tripwire continue to be first-to-market with powerful, well-integrated, holistic solutions that allow IT organizations to manage, measure and maintain their infrastructure, whether physical or virtual. Our competitors simply have not been able to deliver these sorts of capabilities, and the impact of that is reflected in the buying decisions made by customer after customer.”

“BMC and Tripwire help IT gain and maintain control of their virtual and physical data center through automated, policy-based management and compliance,” said Dan Schoenbaum, Senior Vice President of Marketing and Corporate Development at Tripwire. “Ensuring compliance of VMware ESX Server configurations through configuration assessments is a value that only this alliance brings to the table. When coupled with BMC’s change and configuration management solutions, enterprises are able to bring a full Service Automation solution to their virtual environment for improved efficiency, reliability, security and compliance.”

Tripwire Enterprise for VMware ESX Server

The new agentless product for VMware ESX Server provides continuous compliance to operational, regulatory and security standards. Tripwire Enterprise for VMware ESX Server does so through out-of-the-box and custom configuration assessment policies that allow customers to proactively manage their configurations. Tripwire uniquely combines CIS benchmark-based policies with the ability to detect changes to the infrastructure that are not in compliance with security policies to ensure control of all configuration changes across the hypervisor.

Tripwire for VMware ESX Server is part of the company’s broad solution for managing VMware environments. In addition to configuration audit and control for the hypervisor, Tripwire also monitors the state of all virtual machines managed by the hypervisor. And, the company is actively working with VMware to develop additional solutions to address the common security and compliance challenges associated with the new platform.

Pairing Tripwire and BMC Solutions

Enterprises that have integrated Tripwire and BMC solutions are realizing sustained operational, security and regulatory compliance. This unified approach provides the means for IT to use new technology such as virtualization more efficiently and effectively while managing risk by providing continuous, automated compliance in any data center environment. In fact, Tripwire is the only solution to provide visibility to all configuration changes in the enterprise, spanning servers, network devices, databases, directory services and virtual environments.