Given that the two companies’ software products do not overlap but are complementary, the deal also heralds a longer-term relationship, the two claimed yesterday.

In February BMC announced that it was ending development of the Patrol Storage Manager software it had launched in 2001. With no storage management products left in its portfolio, it has struck a deal which will see EMC share the burden of technical support for PSM, and offer PSM users free equivalent licenses to EMC’s ControlCenter storage software. BMC meanwhile will resell ControlCenter to its other customers.

EMC is taking on nine employees from BMC. These are mostly developers, the company said, and will be part of EMC’s commitment to provide level-two and level-three support for PSM, while BMC provides level-one support – until January 2005. The former BMC developers will also be involved in some form of integration of the PSM with ControlCenter, although neither company was able to describe what this would involve. We’re not making any details of the integration available, because we haven’t completed an engineering analysis, said Dan Hoffman, director of BMC’s storage unit.

Although EMC has also gained the PSM source code, it appears that its interest in the deal was not based on access to BMC’s technology. The company has not yet decided whether it will adopt any of the PSM code for use in its own products. That’s an engineering decision to be made over time. The source code was only delivered very recently, said Hoffman.

Both companies stressed a longer term strategic potential to the arrangement, which they said will see the two companies extend the integration of their products. There is already an incentive for EMC and other systems management vendors such as Computer Associates or IBM Corp to integrate their products. BMC said yesterday however that as well as the fact that the deal between itself and EMC has brought the two companies together, there is another reason why EMC may work harder in future to integrate its products with those of BMC. EMC will cooperate with a number of our rivals in the systems management space. But CA and IBM compete with EMC in storage management. We don’t, said Hoffman.

Source: Computerwire