Business Process Redesigns Fuel BMC Q2 Growth
Solution providers in the BMC Partner Network program have helped drive those sales increases, CEO Bob Beauchamp said in an interview. "This is a business process re-architecture for many of our customers," he said, referring to organizations that are implementing BMC's IT management products -- "business service management" software in BMC parlance. Many of those customers are relying on BMC's channel partners to manage the complex job of redesigning and automating those IT business processes.
Beauchamp said BMC has increased both the number of partners in its channel program and the volume of sales through those partners since last year when he vowed to take advantage of changes in channel program leadership at CA, Hewlett-Packard and IBM -- BMC's three main competitors. He said, for example, that BMC wooed a major South African solution provider away from one of BMC's competitors, although he did not identify either one.
One year ago BMC had 400 channel partners worldwide who accounted for about 30 percent of the company's sales. While the channel still accounts for about 30 percent of BMC's revenue today, that number has increased in absolute dollars as the company's sales have grown, according to a company spokesman.
For the six months ended Sept. 30, BMC reported sales of $805.7 million, up 8 percent from the same period one year earlier, fueled by an 11 percent gain in software license sales to $276.8 million. The company expects third-quarter revenue in the range of $430 million to $445 million and revenue growth of more than 6 percent for all of fiscal 2008.
During a conference call with Wall Street analysts, Beauchamp said he has seen no indication of IT spending slowdown in budgets for 2008 -- even among financial service company customers -- as a result of the slowdown in the U.S. housing market and turmoil in the subprime mortgage industry.