BMC, GoldenGate Pair On Data Management/Synch Combo

SmartDBA already offers database monitoring and management capabilities for IBM, Oracle and Microsoft databases. The addition of GoldenGate's technology will give partners another tool to support corporate customers that are integrating disparate databases, said William Donahoo, vice president of business development at BMC, Houston.

GoldenGate, San Francisco, started out offering data synchronization in the Tandem world eight years ago but has since expanded to support most popular distributed databases. The company name is not to be confused with Project Golden Gate, BMC's road map for reducing the cost and complexity of heterogeneous data management in large companies.

BMC has tied GoldenGate's replication and synchronization into SmartDBA, "but you don't have to buy them together. They are modular," Donahoo said. The replication activity will show up on the SmartDBA cockpit, a Web-based console.

The software will be available through BMC's own sales force and its partners.

Partners that already implemented SmartDBA in customer accounts can now offer this additional functionality. As customers finally start upgrading their databases and applications as the economy improves, this capability will come in handy for partners.

"If I want to go from Oracle8i running SAP to 9i running SAP, I can replicate my production system to new system without downtime," Donahoo said.

"No question, realtime data synchronization is a hot topic in the industry right now. ... Because [the GoldenGate product is] realtime and works across all environments, it's a great tool for Oracle customers who want to pull data from disparate sources," said Shane Smutz, account sales manager at Mythics, a Virginia Beach, Va.-based BMC partner.

On the competitive front, Irvine, Calif.-based Quest Software offers its SharePlex replication product for Oracle databases.