Systems management firm BMC has offered to acquire Israeli-based application problem resolution firm Identify Software for $150m cash. The deal is designed to bolster BMC's business service management portfolio with technology that helps developers troubleshoot programming glitches. The purchase, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to close during the first quarter of BMC's FY2007.

Identify claims that deployment of its "black box" recorder software can reduce the time needed to resolve software problems by as much as 80 per cent. Identify's Appsight technology captures a log of the status of a system up to and around the time of system problems allowing developers to more easily identify the root cause of application problems, thereby accelerating the whole development process. AppSight is available for either Microsoft (including .NET) or J2EE software development environments.

The firm's 500 plus customers are typically mid to large scale organisations in the enterprise and ISV segments that use Identify's tools to develop business applications. BMC hopes adding Identify to its portfolio will help it compete with rivals such as CA and IBM Tivoli by increasing the capabilities of its products in transaction management. ®

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