BMC Software Launches Management-as-a-Service Platform for Cloud Applications

With greater adoption of public cloud driving demand for application performance monitoring-as-a-service, software maker BMC Software (News - Alert) has released its real-time, real-user application performance management-as-a-service (APMaaS) platform, called BMC End User Experience Management OnDemand.

The service – which is aimed to provide a more “accurate and actionable” approach to service-level assurance for the cloud – measures and monitors individual user performance, errors and availability of web applications.

The use of media-rich applications online is driving the growing demand for utilizing cloud applications, which are often more efficient and faster, according to Ali Hedayati, vice president and general manager, application management, BMC.

“We are establishing a new standard for SLA management based on accurate, actionable, ‘real-time, real-user’ data,” Hedayati said in a company statement. “Enterprise customers with business-critical applications can look forward to increasing productivity and decreasing system slowdowns or down times, ultimately boosting customer satisfaction.”

The demand for application performance monitoring-as-a-service is being driven by the increasing acceptance of the public cloud, according to Will Cappelli, research vice president at Gartner (News - Alert).

“Growing acceptance of the public cloud has intensified the demand for application performance monitoring-as-a-service (APMaaS) as well as the ability to monitor application stacks that include cloud components,” Capelli said. “These demands are driving highly scalable multitenant platforms for APM (News - Alert) functionality, lightweight technologies for deep-dive components and real end-user experience monitoring.”

Because customer performance is so important to the success of cloud applications, organizations need real-time visibility into the real user performance of these applications. Plus, this has to be maintained without limiting the ability of IT to leverage different cloud platforms and acceleration solutions to ensure optimal performance for the customer. As a result, IT must maintain visibility regardless of how the cloud application is delivered.

In addition, when there is a performance challenge with one of these cloud applications, businesses need root cause information in order to figure out if there is an issue with the page or application design or if the application needs to be accelerated to remain competitive, BMC officials said.

The Houston-based company recently teamed up with Akamai (News - Alert), which is using BMC End User Experience Management OnDemand to support its Akamai Intelligent Platform, giving enterprises performance management visibility and detailed service level metrics for applications accelerated by the Akamai Intelligent Platform, according to Willie Tejada, senior vice president and general manager of the enterprise cloud division, Akamai.

“We see BMC’s End User Experience Management OnDemand as a key solution in enabling cloud adoption,” Tejada said. “We believe that BMC’s unique real-user on-demand approach to end-user management offers a very robust and complete application performance management-as-a-service solution.”

Company officials said they expect to release general availability of the product in the second half of 2012.