IBM Buys BigFix For Data Centre Management

IBM has agreed to buy system management firm BigFix, to help control devices and make data centres smarter.

The two companies are already partners, and BigFix’s management technology adds to IBM’s existing configuration management abilities, and automates and simplifies endpoint management for large environments, said Al Zollar, general manager of IBM Tivoli Software.

Management must include the end points

“BigFix will really help us fulfill what is really a critical need for many of our clients, and that is dealing with the endpoints that make up the core point of access for many of their IT systems and services,” he said.

“This is about helping our customers make their operations smarter, including this notion of a smarter data centre,” he continued. “Of course in the data centre, this command centre has got to involve the full data centre assets—server and storage devices … [and] now of course the endpoint.”

Founded in 1997, BigFix has more than 200 employees. Once the acquisition is completed, BigFix will be integrated into the IBM Software Group. The company competes mostly with Symantec’s Altiris technology, as well as Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), BigFix CEO Dave Robbins said.

“By and large our mission in life is to go remove the shackles of SCCM from our IT customers and free them to do other things that are more important [and] save them a lot of money,” Robbins said.

BigFix also has a partnership with Trend Micro for endpoint security. BigFix products include DSS SAM which tracks licences on a company’s servers.

The deal is expected to close in the third quarter.