By William Fellows

BMC Software Inc said outstanding growth in its mainframe application management business drove its fourth quarter along with improving interest in Windows NT and MQSeries. Mainframe revenue was up 38% at $211.4m over $153.1m last time, while distributed systems revenue was up 39% at $107.6m over $77.6m a year ago. Mainframe revenue from its Boole & Babbage acquisition was up 15% at $44.3m over $38.4m last while distributed systems revenue was up 69% at $23.2m over $13.7m a year ago. BMC’s open systems Patrol/DB DB2 application management product was short of expectations for the full year although it performed above better than expected in the fourth quarter. BMC said it didn’t acquire B&B and New Dimension Software to compete directly with Computer Associates/Platinum Technology or anyone else but to improve its ability to solve customer problems. ERP is a relatively small piece of business in terms of dollars, BMC says. It didn’t land big distributed systems deals at the rate it had hoped but expects inconsistencies to be ironed out going forward.

Meantime Y2K is going to be a huge, huge non-event for it according to CEO Max Watson. Fourth quarter net income was up 33% at $100.4m including a $33.8m net acquisition charge, a $20m tax gain and a $1.5m charge for implementing the SFAS No 133 reporting rule, on revenue up 37% at $386.5m over $282.8m. The figures include the pro rata inclusion of Boole & Babbage numbers for the fourth quarter 1999 and 1998. B&B contributed $67.5m in the quarter, up 30% on $52.1m last time. Earnings per share were $0.40. It beat the consensus estimate of $0.45 by two cents excluding charges and gains. For the year net income was up 92% at $362.8m over $188.5m on revenue up 32% at $1.3bn over $985.2m, which includes B&B’s contribution: $240m up 22% from $197.1m in 1998. BMC claims B&B’s quarter was significantly helped by the ‘halo’ effect of the acquisition. It expects the top line to grow at 25% going forwards excluding amortization charges, and with services and New Dimension Software that should rise to more than 30%. It says that distributed systems revenue should grow by more than 40%, double its anticipated mainframe growth.