BMC Software plans acquisitions

As the demand for servers and computers grows, there will be an increased need for automation of IT infrastructure to cut labour cost for management of IT infrastructure which is a $160 billion market.

It is growing at 10 per cent per annum, Kia Behnia, chief corporate architect, CTO office, BMC Software, a provider of business service management services told reporters.

In the last six months BMC has acquired two smaller companies for increasing automation of its enterprise service management business.

"We are now interested in acquisitions for increasing our capabilities in managing virtual infrastructure," said Behnia while sharing that the company has a tieup with VMWare, a subsidiary of IMC Inc for virtual infrastructure management for the last two years.

However, "There is demand for increased capabilities of virtualisation from our clients which we will cater to our inorganic growth," said Behnia.

BMC has over $1.5 billion in cash reserves. It had announced in the past $1 billion to buyback shares over the next couple of years and also following a merger and acquisition-led growth strategy.

It's earlier acquisitions, ProactiveNet is a real time, proactive analyses solutions company with a global workforce of 140 people of which 110 are based in Bangalore.

Meanwhile, RealOps is an all-in-one service management solutions company that integrates diverse multi-vendor technologies while accelerating and automating the execution of critical IT operations. "RealOps also contracted work to India which now will be executed from Pune," said Behnia.

Behnia was in Pune to announce the company's college campus recruitment programme and the appointment of Pankaj Dhume, president and chief executive officer, BMC Software India.

"We have shortlisted 20 colleges and expect to partner at least four colleges this year for introducing systems management curriculum and project work," said Dhume adding that the company has initiated a campus recruitment programme and plans to recruit 100 students from the campus this year.

BMC has 1,000 people in India of which 900 are in Pune and the remainder in Bangalore. The company accounts for 35 per cent on BMC's global R&D workforce and 10-20 per cent of its patents. In a bid to increase its patent filings from India, the company has launched a new innovations recognition programme.

"We hope to increase the patents output to 30 per cent with such an initiative," said Behnia.