The rush to serve the small and midsized business market by management software providers continued Monday with the introduction by BMC Software of a suite of software tailored to meet the specific needs of smaller companies.

The introduction of BMC IT Systems Management Express comes just two weeks after IBM introduced a suite of software products also targeted at the SMB market, with the brand name of Tivoli Express.

"Our strategy is to take this market beyond a point-product type of offering and move into an integrated solution strategy that will expand our footprint in the SMB space," says Carlos Hidalgo, senior manager of SMB solutions marketing for BMC. He says the software will let smaller companies improve their operational efficiencies, optimize their IT assets and infrastructure, lower the cost of support, and enhance security.

According to IDC, small and medium-sized businesses purchase more than $70 billion in software annually, a growing market that also has increased needs for easily deployed management capabilities, Hidalgo says.

BMC IT Systems Management Express uses BMC Performance Manager Express to monitor servers, applications, storage, and network devices, as well as Web transactions remotely. The suite also takes advantage of capabilities from BMC's Identity Management and Service Desk Express software.

BMC says it will announce more SMB related products on March 20th specifically for help desk requirements.