Boole & Babbage Inc says it’ll overtake Candle Corp in the MQ Series management race with a new suite of tools for managing IBM Corp’s messaging middleware. Candle shot back immediately claiming that it’ll pick up contracts with a couple of Boole-only shops in the next few weeks. Boole’s new Command/MQ suite marks the beginning of an MQ Series management turf war between it and Candle; both insist their tools are superior. San Jose, California-based Boole is shipping the host component of Command/MQ this week, and will ship the automation component and event management agents in September. Boole has offered discreet MQSeries management tools in the past, but the suite now also includes Sysplex systems management software. Hoping to take some market share away from Santa Monica, California-based Candle’s CommandCenter for MQ Series suite, Boole is touting the fact that it built its tools in-house and claims its Command Post technology allows it to identify external network problems as well as internal ones. It says Candle’s system can’t see problems outside the network. Candle denies this but admits Boole is a threat to its MQ Series business. Candle points to the 33 customers it already has as evidence of its lead over Boole. Candle claims it’s sitting on deals with some users which have been Boole-only shops until this point in time. Boole’s suite is priced from $35,000. Candle’s tools begin at about $25,000.
