BMC Introduces Latest Capacity Management Product With New Branding, And New Vision

Houston-based BMC, an IT management software vendor, is preparing to release its first capacity management solution to incorporate forward-looking information into forecasts of IT demand.

TrueSight Capacity Optimization 10.0 delivers capacity and cost visibility across all resources found in the modern data center. The latest version better aligns IT resources with business demand by offering reservation functionality that factors in indicators of future resource needs.

Version 10, which will become generally available on Dec. 19, also extends the solution to work on OpenStack-powered clouds. It is the first product in BMC's capacity management line to be distributed under the TrueSight brand.

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BMC announced in September that the new brand would encompass both its capacity management and operations management portfolios. TrueSight represents a new strategy and vision, Giuseppe Nardiello, senior manager of product management at BMC, told CRN.

Previous versions of the product, distributed under the more simple moniker of BMC Capacity Optimization, only looked at historical data regarding business and market growth to forecast future usage. The reservation analytics capabilities built into release 10 take into account upcoming projects, new market initiatives and other forward-looking developments expected to demand computing resources.

"We're adding, and that's why we're talking about reservations, information about new projects that have not been delivered, so you have no possibility for measuring those workloads. But you can take information from the application teams, from project management tools and the provisioning layer, about what is expected to be the consumption, and make sure you are reserving resources for allowing those projects to be delivered safely, at the right time with the right amount of capacity," Nardiello told CRN.

The solution gathers key performance indicator metrics that explain consumption levels, like numbers of users and transactional volumes, helping answer questions about where to place additional capacity to sustain business workloads.

"You can really understand what is the expected amount of resources you need in the future," Nardiello said.

Previous BMC Capacity Optimization releases already were cloud-enabled by integrating with VMware.

"Now we are expanding that support specifically to OpenStack-based clouds because that is a technology that’s gaining a lot of traction from customers" who want to free themselves of proprietary infrastructure platforms, Nardiello said.

The software also has the ability to do cost analysis and cloud optimization on the fly, so capacity management can be requested when provisioning resources to support realtime decisions on where to place workloads for the greatest optimization.

"Unlike many solutions, we cover not just compute resources, but everything in the data center today across the private and hybrid environment. Storage, network resources, you name it," Nardiello told CRN.

NEXT: Not Your Typical Channel Partnership

TrueSight Capacity Optimization has a somewhat complicated history.

The capacity management product originally was developed by an Italian company called Neptuny under the product name Caplan. In 2010, BMC purchased Caplan, along with a large chunk of the Neptuny software division.

The remainder of Neptuny's business was renamed Moviri, which immediately became a BMC go-to-market partner for the capacity management solutions the Houston company began selling.

But Moviri isn't a traditional channel partner, said Renato Bonomini, who heads the company's U.S. operations out of a field office in Boston.

"Most BMC partners are usually resellers. What we do is partner with BMC in making sure the solution is actually adapted to customers. We're not so much interested in selling the solution; we're interested in making sure customers can use it through consulting services and third-party integrations with other tools and services," Bonomini told CRN.

While earlier releases were effective solutions for capacity planning, the problem was "you're always looking backward," Bonomini told CRN.

Moviri worked with BMC last year on testing a prototype for the reservation-analytic model, which was motivated by customer requests. The project spawned the TrueSight release, Bonomini said.

"Instead of looking backwards, you're also looking forward," Bonomini told CRN.

Bonomini said Moviri has worked with a number of customers who participated in the beta program because of the reservation feature, "and they say that as soon as it's available, they want to start using it."

"These are customers very ahead in terms of technology. They have mature capacity planning processes, and this is going to give them an edge on how they do capacity planning," he said.

The same type of customers, those with mature capabilities, are also the ones adopting OpenStack and have been encouraging integration with the open-source IaaS technology, he added.

BMC will formally announce TrueSight Capacity Optimization 10.0 Wednesday at the Gartner Data Center, Infrastructure & Operations Conference in Las Vegas.

PUBLISHED DEC. 2, 2014