Systems management software house BMC Corp claims it is the first vendor to extend Microsoft Corp’s Internet Explorer to browse applications and data management objects with its new product, Patrol Pathfinder. Pathfinder, a plug-in for Explorer, supports application and data object discovery, and the browsing and launching of BMC’s Patrol system management suite of products. It provides a birds-eye view of user consoles with a standard interface for launching applications and performing administration tasks. Pathfinder can launch Patrol DB-Voyager, Patrol DB-Alter, Patrol DB-Change Manager and Patrol Watch, and discovers objects made visible to it by Patrol Agents and Patrol Database Administration products. Objects include device parameters, applications, databases and their objects for the environment. Although continuing successfully to expand beyond its original IBM Corp IMS and DB2 database heartland into Unix and NT-based systems, ‘open systems’ still contributed only 30% to BMC Software’s overall $560m revenues last year, albeit nearly doubling its performance on previous revenues of $430m in 1995. Houston, Texas-based BMC expects ‘open systems’ to account for half of its overall revenues in the next couple of years and in particular is talking up its NT support, where it sees the majority of that revenue coming from. The company also said it sees Pathfinder as a further step along the way. Pricing depends on the number of consoles and managed objects.
