More Control, Virtually

BMC Software Inc. is rolling out a software this week designed to help system administrators better allocate IT resources in real time among virtualized servers based on business-service requirements.

The Service-Oriented Resource Management software includes a new BMC Virtualizer Suite, which coordinates on-demand resource provisioning. It also has new predictive capabilities for BMC's existing Performance Assurance for Virtual Servers performance-an- alysis package, which administrators can use to make resource-acquisition and deployment decisions.

The products fit into BMC's business-service-management strategy, which aims to tie IT-resource management to business requirements. Virtualizer offers policy-based resource management and provisioning for enterprise clusters and standalone servers. It allows server resources to be shared across multiple applications.

One customer hopes BMC can deliver. Many vendors talk about pulling all of the management silos together, but not many follow through, says Tim Hill, capacity planner at logistics and transportation company CNF Inc. "The goal is to have all management information in a single database," Hill says, "and store it all in one place where IT and business people could get to it. With a tighter organization, our responsiveness to the customer could be better and it could ultimately lead to increased revenue."