EMC Chews & Swallows BMC Unit: Page 2 of 3

Both companies insist that the unmentioned amount of money changing hands is not a material issue for either of them. Instead, they say, the vendors entered the deal to gain access to new customer bases and achieve a tighter partnership. EMC, which has actively been trying to expand its open storage management software market share for the past year and a half, will, for instance, not only take over the approximately 50 customers currently using Patrol Storage Manager, but will also have access to the more than 5,000 customers using BMC’s other Patrol products (see Will EMC Salvage BMC Unit? EMC Sucks Up Astrum, and EMC to Acquire Prisa, Finally).

EMC’s senior vice president of open software operations, Bill Nelson, insists that the migration of Patrol Storage Manager customers to ControlCenter should be relatively painless and won’t cost customers a penny, since they won’t be asked to pay any additional software licensing fees. “On these 50 plus accounts, we’ll develop 50 migration plans,” he says. “They’ll all be unique.”

For Patrol customers, the deal is in fact a relief, says Doug Pushard, BMC’s vice president of corporate development, pointing out that it brings to an end months of speculation over what would happen to the product line. “We have talked to a majority of the customers over the past couple of days,” he says. “The majority are not just happy, but extremely happy.”

Of course, the deal is about more than moving customers from one software platform to another. Going for tighter integration of their technologies, the companies say they hope to leverage EMC’s clout in the storage market with BMC’s server and application-level expertise to get an edge over the competition.

“There’s a potential for these two companies to develop a total management solution that could be very competitive with HP and IBM,” Gerr says.