Of the big four management vendors, BMC is often the one most criticized for its lack of networking expertise.

While BMC's business service management (BSM), systems and applications management products generally receive praise, the vendor sometimes gets called out for not having as much deep network management knowledge as, say, HP. And others such as IBM and CA have acquired their way to network management knowledge with Micromuse and Concord, respectively.

But BMC representatives have made it clear to me in several talks that the company is fully aware that in order to fulfill its broader strategy of BSM and IT process automation, it needs to have the network piece in place. 

That is probably one of the main reasons BMC acquired network change and configuration management vendor Emprisa Networks. The company this week announced it had acquired Emprisa, a company that in the past competed with the likes of AlterPoint, Voyence, Intelliden, and Rendition Networks -- which Opsware (now part of HP) acquired to build its Network Automation System software.

Emprisa's E-NetWare software can help network managers collect device configurations, monitor changes and report audit trails across multi-vendor routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers and other enterprise devices. And BMC is putting the technology to work immediately to offer an application called BMC Configuration Automation for Networks.

In fact, BMC coupled the acquisition news with updates to its entire suite of automation products -- which are available now. A partnership with Emprisa enabled BMC to make the network change and configuration management software available to its customers. Emprisa technology is already integrated into BMC's Atrium configuration management database (CMDB), for instance. 

Recalling BMC's ProactiveNet and RealOps acquisitions earlier this year makes me think the company is working at building an automated management empire in line with competitor HP. And despite talks of BMC being an acquisition target for companies such as Oracle looking to get into the management market with a big buy, BMC seems to be the one signing the checks more often than not.

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