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BMC Software Manages Network Traffic at a Business Level With Packeteer Partnership and New Network Performance Solution New Version of PATROL(R) DashBoard Delivers Broad Industry Support for Network Components and Adds Application Layer Visibility HOUSTON, May 3 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- BMC Software, Inc., , a leading provider of enterprise management solutions, today announced it is expanding its network offering to better enable companies to embrace Business Service Management (BSM) at the networking level. BSM is BMC Software's approach for enabling companies to manage their IT infrastructure and services from a business perspective. As part of this announcement, the company introduced a new partnership with Packeteer(R), , a leading provider of application traffic management solutions, which provides Packeteer information to BMC Software solutions to help companies improve network services delivered to critical applications. In addition, the company is delivering version 6.7 of PATROL DashBoard that adds new integrations to several third-party networking components, expanding the data available in DashBoard reports so customers gain a greater understanding of the overall health of their network. Packeteer, a leading provider of Application Traffic Management solutions, has joined BMC Software's Technology Alliance program. As part of the program, BMC Software's network performance management, event management and service impact management solutions will now be able to pull network, application and end-to-end response time information from Packeteer appliances through PATROL DashBoard. Together, these solutions enable customers to better align network resources with business objectives. "BMC Software's Business Service Management vision, supported by industry- leading products such as PATROL DashBoard, aligns closely with Packeteer's goal to ensure and accelerate performance of networked applications for businesses," said Ajmal Noorani, vice president of business development for Packeteer. "This partnership benefits both companies' users, offering them unparalleled visibility into traffic on their networks and the ability to control and compress that traffic. This results in lower WAN costs and improved application performance." Packeteer's application traffic management system monitors, controls and accelerates application performance over the WAN and Internet. It is unique in the industry in monitoring and classifying network traffic up to the application layer and then allowing users to apply policies and control over those traffic flows. Packeteer also lets companies identify and contain traffic generated by virus or worm-infected nodes, which allows businesses to mitigate the impact of viruses or worms until they can be eliminated. The first BMC Software product to be integrated with Packeteer's PacketShaper is PATROL DashBoard, a network performance management solution. PATROL DashBoard now can auto-discover Packeteer's traffic shaper devices and their configured classes for bandwidth prioritization. PATROL DashBoard also is able to provide threshold management capabilities, as well as alerting, trending and capacity planning and diagnostics of end-to-end network degradation, based on Packeteer information. Additionally, Packeteer's application traffic management solution users can utilize PATROL DashBoard to gain a centralized view of how applications are using network resources, the response times end-users are experiencing and the distribution between network and server response time for any client-server application. BMC Software is providing integration of Packeteer information and alerts through PATROL DashBoard to BMC(R) Event Manager and BMC Service Impact Manager solutions. This integration enables alerts from Packeteer -- created when threshold levels are exceeded -- to be forwarded to these solutions by PATROL DashBoard. For example, the integration with BMC Software's BMC Service Impact Manager enables business users to immediately view the impact of lengthy response times, as measured by the Packeteer devices, on business services. With this integration, companies can monitor business services and take measures to improve application traffic priorities accordingly. "The network component is essential in delivering business services. Our partnership with Packeteer enables our customers to monitor business services and change application traffic priorities to improve them," said Mary Nugent, vice president and general manager, Service Management Solutions, BMC Software. "Integrating Packeteer's visibility capabilities through PATROL DashBoard greatly enhances our customers' overall network and application management capabilities." BMC Software is seeing increased demand for its network performance management solutions among channel partners. The Packeteer partnership, coupled with the third-party integrations in PATROL DashBoard 6.7 will bring additional value to these partners. "We chose PATROL DashBoard because it offers us a much faster return on investment over other network solutions on the market," said Mark Collis, president of Electronic Strategies Inc., a reseller of both PATROL DashBoard and Packeteer solutions. "PATROL DashBoard has worked well for us by offering quick deployment, ease-of-use, very little maintenance and out-of-the-box features. Furthermore, the new integration of the Packeteer appliance will help our customers to better engineer their network through a clearer understanding of how the network is supporting their critical applications now and in the long term." New Version of PATROL Dashboard Integrates Third-party Data into Business Service Management (BSM) Strategy BMC Software understands the importance of the network in enabling companies to align business services with IT as part of the company's BSM strategy. With BSM, customers can understand and predict the impact of technology changes on the business, and conversely, understand how changes in the business impact the IT infrastructure. To support that effort, BMC Software is also announcing a new version of PATROL DashBoard. Among the strengths of PATROL DashBoard are its value-added network performance reports, including real-time analysis, threshold-crossing notification, capacity- planning features and Top Talkers reports. According to Neil Sloan, Network Manager, Egg plc, one of Europe's leading financial service providers, "PATROL DashBoard really provides us a quick return on our investment. Using PATROL DashBoard, I can provide capacity planning network performance statistics to management. I can now tell them, for example, how my top 50 servers performed over a period, or how our router utilization will be affected over the coming months. These are good high- level reports to show how busy the network is. And by having a more stable environment and adopting a proactive approach, we are now able to offer a better online service to our customers." This new release of PATROL DashBoard 6.7 adds integration to Packeteer as well as other third-party network components to enhance the data available in these reports. PATROL DashBoard 6.7 can now access information from: -- Nortel Networks' Alteon load balancers, enabling auto discovery and monitoring of the physical and virtual servers. This provides customers with detailed reports to check their load balancer performance and optimize the load balancing policies as part of assuring end-user service levels for Web servers, for example. -- Nokia and Cisco Firewalls, helping customers identify potential bottlenecks caused by firewalls. -- Cisco IPSec VPNs, providing the ability to view performance of each VPN tunnel. PATROL DashBoard simplifies the complex VPN environment for network administrators, enabling them to more easily identify congested or misconfigured IPSec tunnels. -- Cisco Netflow -- PATROL DashBoard 6.7 has enhanced its existing integration with Cisco Netflow to add the ability to monitor application protocols distribution on LAN and WAN interfaces. PATROL DashBoard's Top Talker report can now indicate the highest exchanges per protocol, helping customers to isolate abnormal and unforeseen bandwidth utilization, such as peer-to-peer download, virus broadcasts, application, security holes, etc. Pricing and Availability PATROL DashBoard 6.7 is available immediately. Pricing starts at $3,500 and varies depending on the size of the network. About BMC Software BMC Software, Inc. is a leading provider of enterprise management solutions that empower companies to manage their IT infrastructure from a business perspective. Delivering Business Service Management, BMC Software solutions span enterprise systems, applications, databases and service management. Founded in 1980, BMC Software has offices worldwide and fiscal 2004 revenues of more than $1.4 billion. For more information about BMC Software, visit http://www.bmc.com/ . BMC Software, the BMC Software logos, and all other BMC Software product or service names are registered trademarks or trademarks of BMC Software, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks belong to their respective companies. http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20011003/BMCLOGO http://photoarchive.ap.org/ DATASOURCE: BMC Software, Inc. CONTACT: Linda McDowell of BMC Software, Inc., +1-713-918-3518, or ; or Julie Redard of Porter Novelli, +1-617-897-8200, ext. 234, or , for BMC Software, Inc. Web site: http://www.bmc.com/

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