“Sleeper” Compuware announced today that it intends to purchase Proxima Technology. The press release indicates that Proxima’s Centauri product will become part of the Vantage suite.
Compuware has some good products and technologies of which I’ve used quite a few in the Vantage suite. They’ve made some key acquisitions over the past couple of years but I haven’t seen or heard much on how well they’ve been integrated into the suite. I thought the Adlex acquisition was a good one but it’s positioning and marketing has been relatively quiet. I’m not sure how well Compuware can or will carry the Business Service Management message or if they’ll just use this as a much needed improvement for the “top layer” dashboard and visualization needed to mend, patch and fix poor architectural choices in the Vantage suite, especially with the main user interface and dashboard. It was in need of significant work when I used it in the past. I’d bet this is a key driver for this acquisition.
This should make for some interesting discussions around here and potentially more work! It’s always fun to watch the new year come in and speculate on what it may bring. I wonder if there will be more M&A in this space this year by the big players looking to fill gaps, the smaller combining forces or a BSM/SLM convergence. Managed Objects, Digital Fuel, Oblicore, Netuitive, Indicative, OpTier, Magnum, etc. are all potential M&A targets now probably in that order. Then there’s BMC, who may revisit their definition of Business Service Management and seek to fill their gap with a pure play BSM solution rather than their ITSM based BSM story in place today.