Integrated system models IT changes and shows how they will affect business processes

IT management software vendor BMC today announced it is offering a system with business process management (BPM) specialist IDS Scheer to help firms judge how the performance of their IT infrastructure affects business processes.

The new partnership will see the two companies launch a joint system at IDS Scheer's annual conference in Amsterdam later this week, integrating IDS Scheer's Aris Business Architect process modeling suite with BMC's Atrium Configuration Management Database (CMDB).

Tony Goodwin of BMC said that by integrating IDS Scheer's ability to map and monitor firms' business processes with BMC's ability to manage their IT infrastructure, firms can better see how changes or failures within the IT environment affect business processes.

"It means you can be far more proactive in your IT management and identity single points of failure where an IT problem could adversely affect a critical business process before it happens," said Goodwin. "It also allows you to model the impact of changes to the IT infrastructure and limit the risk of disruption to the business."

Some experts claim that up to 80 percent of IT outages are caused by changes to the IT infrastructure having unexpected affects. So tools to show how changes will affect critical business processes could improve the way IT directors plan projects to limit disruption to the business.

Separately, BMC today launched version 2.0 of its Atrium CMDB and Automated Discovery suite featuring a new CMDB management console, configuration item graphical relationship viewer and browser, and status-accounting and drift-tracking functionality.

Goodwin said the alliance coupled with the new products were the first in a series of announcements from BMC as it accelerates its Business Service Management (BSM) strategy to develop products that manage the link between IT assets and business processes. He added that the company would launch 50 new BSM products across 90 percent of its product lines in the next few months.