BMC Software today said it acquired privately held software maker ProactiveNet for an undisclosed amount.

BMC, one of the big four management vendors announced it would augment its business-service management (BSM) products with ProactiveNet's technology, which can detect potential problems. The combined technologies will provide customers with software that automates problem detection officials said.

ProactiveNet software uses statistical analysis to determine the normal operating behavior of networks, applications and servers. The software alerts customers when abnormal patterns occur, information which the company says can help thwart performance degradation before it happens.

Last year, ProactiveNet added its own BSM capabilities and in some cases could be seen as competitor to BMC, CA, HP and IBM, but industry watchers say adding the software to BMC's portfolio will equip the larger vendor with more analysis capabilities.

"ProactiveNet has a very good analysis engine that excels at identifying anomalous behaviors of whatever metrics it is pointed at. This capability dramatically improves the signal to noise ratio of monitored events so that administrators only see events that are worth investigating," says Jasmine Noel, a principal analyst with Ptak, Noel & Associates.

For that reason, she says, a good integration starting point for the ProactiveNet technology would be with BMC's Event Manager. As for the long term, Noel can see how ProactiveNet technology would help BMC tackle managing composite applications in virtual environments, for instance.

"Longer-term integration with BMC’s CMDB, service modeling and autodiscovery capabilities result in a very powerful root-cause analysis solution for complex, composite applications resident on virtual infrastructure," she says.

The acquisition is subject to approval by ProactiveNet stockholders, and BMC expects it to close during the next 30 days.

Employees at ProactiveNet, based in Santa Clara, Calif., will become part of BMC.