BMC partners to tackle modern mainframe challenges

BMC wants its channel partners to target large and medium-sized businesses with new Automated Mainframe Intelligence products; other channel news from the week.

BMC Software Inc. said its new mainframe offerings have opened opportunities for BMC partners to target organizations grappling with digital business demands.

The vendor launched its latest contribution to the mainframe market, Automated Mainframe Intelligence (AMI), last month. Billed as a "self-managing mainframe," AMI capabilities include domain expertise, machine learning, automation and predictive analytics capabilities, according to the vendor.

"We believe the mainframe has a very important future ahead of it to help our largest clients ... continue to run and operate their businesses effectively, and we intend to bring them solutions to help them do that," said John McKenny, vice president of ZSolutions at BMC, based in Houston.

McKenny said BMC developed the AMI product line to meet the demands of modern mainframe environment and digital business pressures.

"When you look at the [mainframe market], there is obviously tons of automation, but not in the way we think of in terms of modern analytics, modern machine learning and modern automation," he said.

Additionally, BMC recognized that mainframes offer customers different kinds of challenges compared with other areas of their IT environments, he said. He noted that the baby boomer workforce that has experience with mainframe technology is retiring, leaving a skills gap in its wake.

We believe the mainframe has a very important future ahead of it to help our largest clients ... continue to run and operate their businesses effectively.
John McKennyvice president of ZSolutions, BMC

He added that the loss of these skill sets is inspiring customers to "look at embracing more modern techniques and technologies to help them manage and run their environment more effectively than ever before."

"I think what we are seeing in what I would call the medium-size organizations, many of them are looking to [BMC partners] to operate more in a managed services way," he noted.

The demand for managed services is driven, in part, by customers not wanting to build certain skill sets internally to run and manage infrastructure. They would prefer to offload the technical work to BMC partners instead, he added.

McKenny said mainframe customers are also increasingly focused on bolstering security capabilities. Last month, BMC revealed a definitive agreement to purchase assets of CorreLog, a provider of security management software to mainframe customers. McKenny said it will combine its mainframe technology with CorreLog's security offerings to build a set of AMI products for security.

The CorreLog purchase will "bring to us a set of solutions that competes in that area of security information and event management, with a set of agents that can detect in real time a variety of different anomalies around potential threats" to mainframe security, he said.

BMC expects the CorreLog acquisition to close this quarter.

New Cisco intent-based networking product in the works

Cisco is developing an intent-based networking (IBN) offer as part of the company's customer experience (CX) initiative.

Cisco's partners will be able to resell and co-deliver the offer, dubbed CX Enterprise IBN. The offer spans use case review, implementation readiness, project planning, deployment best practices and adoption best practices. Availability is slated for spring 2019.

Maria Martinez, chief customer experience officer at Cisco, said partners will be able to find a service project behind each one of the offer's components.

Other news

  • Security vendor Bitdefender unveiled an integration partnership with Kaseya, which offers IT infrastructure management products to managed service providers. Bitdefender said its Cloud Security products now integrate with Kaseya's remote monitoring and management software, Kaseya VSA.
  • ERP Maestro, an SAP security vendor, rolled out its global Momentum Partner Program. The program targets several partner types, including audit firms, consultants and resellers. Partners can access product and sales training, a demo environment, technical support, marketing resources and early product release updates, the vendor said.
  • Cloud communications vendor Intermedia said it added a chat function and enhanced mobile and desktop experience to its unified-communications-as-a-service platform, Intermedia Unite.
  • Jason Wakeam has joined database vendor MemSQL as vice president of business development and alliances. Wakeam joins the company from Cloudera, where he was responsible for channel strategy and programs. In a statement, Wakeam said MemSQL is "creating new opportunities for partners to specialize and provide managed services."

Market Share is a news roundup published every Friday.

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