Enterprise software company BMC is buying Netreo, a specialist in monitoring IT networks and applications, including tracking how well applications, networks and IT systems are working.
Netreo brings application and network management capabilities that enable a full-stack, open observability and artificial intelligence operations (AIOps) solution with the BMC Helix suite of products.
This will provide BMC’s customers with visibility into performance across their networks, infrastructure and applications from a modern, open observability platform.
The deal should be done by mid-2024 if everything goes as planned; terms of the deal were not disclosed. Netreo products and technologies are expected to be integrated into the BMC Helix suite of products.
Examples of integration points include Netreo’s network, APM and OTel data into the Helix Observability and AIOps solution, which is expected to help enhance the AI capabilities in Helix to proactively prevent incidents and find incident RCAs much faster.
Helix ITOM is an open observability and AIOps solution that provides ML/AI-powered discovery, monitoring, optimization, automation and remediation of services.
It runs on top of the Helix platform that integrates with tools and products through BMC’s Integration Platform as a Service (IPaaS) capabilities. The platform empowers IT to prevent incidents and deliver ML-powered reliable services, providing both AIOps and observability from one platform.
“The Netreo products are built as easy to integrate with well-defined APIs, and we expect to see quick and seamless integration,” said Margaret Lee, senior vice president and general manager of digital service and operations management at BMC.
She explained Netreo’s Network Monitoring and Performance Diagnostics (NPMD), Application Performance Management (APM) and OpenTelemetry (OTel) capabilities integrated with Helix would provide customers with a compelling set of IT operations management (ITOM) capabilities.
Lee noted IT operations teams are faced with data silos when monitoring full systems; data from application, server, database and network are not connected.
“By including network and APM data into Helix ITOM platform, we can deliver full-stack, open observability from a unified platform with our generative AI innovation and provide customers with the real-time intelligence and issue resolution capabilities,” she said.
She argued the acquisition strengthens BMC’s position to help enterprises and network operators transform the way they deliver critical services, helping them prevent incidents and increase customer satisfaction.
“The combination of network performance management data from Netreo with Helix would enable faster resolution of issues,” Lee said.
The network data is correlated with other data sources, and BMC patented composite AI applied on top of this data helps surface emerging issues and remediate them before they affect customers.
AIOps capabilities apply to telemetry and data ingested from multiple tools spanning network, infrastructure and applications.
“Not only does that reduce noise, but it also helps identify root cause issues and actionable insights,” Lee said.
She added generative AI (GenAI) has already, and will even more in the future, impact the spending decisions of enterprise tech buyers and how enterprise software companies continue to scale.
“We are working with many of our customers and partners on the next generation of AutonomousOps, ServiceOps, and AIOps powered by BMC’s generative AI, which we call HelixGPT,” Lee explained.
The company has been using GPT and large language models (LLM) since 2021, and in June 2023, BMC announced generative AI /LLM capabilities on the Helix service and operations management platform.
The aim was to enhance the user experience and provide generative AI insights to proactively resolve tickets, issues, incidents and requests.
With BMC Helix AIOps and observability, for example, there is an intuitive conversational BMC HelixGPT interface, where IT teams are provided with a conversational user interface (UI) of issues and situations that have been proactively uncovered through GenAI.
“While GenAI offers significant benefits such as customer experience and streamlining IT operations, it must be implemented thoughtfully,” Lee said. “You need to understand the limits of AI and ensure proper training to avoid challenges down the road.”
