BMC Software, perhaps best known for its Remedy line of IT management products, announced today that it will acquire VaraLogix, makers of tools that help companies automate software deployments. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The move follows BMC’s acquisition of StreamStep and continued efforts to tap into the growing DevOps market.
“DevOps” is a nebulous term referring to, among other things, the application of methods from agile software development to IT operations. Automation is a big theme and tools like Puppet (backed by Puppet Labs) and Chef (backed by Opscode) are popular tools.
Many incumbent IT and development project management companies are scrambling to adopt the methodologies and lingo of agile and DevOps. Serena Software for instance got its start selling change management software for COBOL applications running on mainframe since the 1980s, but these days it’s marketing an agile and DevOps oriented IT management products such as Demand Manager and Agile Scheduler. Other older companies like UC4 and IBM are jumping on the bandwagon as well.
And the craze isn’t just limited to IT management vendors. Earlier this year storage giant EMC acquired the agile development consulting company Pivotal Labs.
Varalogix, a lesser known player in the DevOps tool market, was founded by CEO Tim Wall (who was previously the Manager of Financial Planning and New Business Development for the Playboy Entertainment Group) and CTO Robin Fuller (previously a Senior Software Engineer at IBM).