The acquisition hit parade in the IT management arena continues. On Friday, BMC purchased RealOps and on Monday HP acquired Opsware (and Neoware).

The similarilities between the two acquired companies is noteworthy, as is the opportunity for the acquirors to market their new assets to enterprises, as well as managed service providers (MSPs).

IT management has always been an issue of concern, but until recently it has never been a lucrative market for network and system management (NSM) platforms and tools. As IT becomes more pivotal to business operations and optimizing the performance of IT becomes more essential for business success, the importance of effective IT management has grown.

It has become increasingly apparent that enterprises, as well as MSPs, need as many tools as they can find to help them automate as much of the IT management function as possible. Market studies from various research firm has found that most IT/network professionals spend approximately 80% of their time just keeping their IT/network operations up and running. And, ironically the vast majority of network and system failures are due to human error.

Automating many of the routine aspects of NSM can significantly reduce the amount of time IT/network professionals spend performing mundane tasks and reacting to unplanned events. The promise of IT automation systems, such as Opsware and RealOps, is that they can perform these tasks in an automated and proactive fashion that can dramatically increase network and system availability and performance levels.

But, few enterprise IT organizations or MSPs are interested in spending the time selecting and integrating best-of-breed NSM point products to build their own IT management platforms. Instead, they are seeking vendors who can provide an integrated platform which can address the bulk of their IT management needs.

By adding these capabilities to their software portfolios, HP and BMC can appeal to both enterprise IT organizations who are trying to better manage their operations, and MSPs who are trying to more cost-effectively deliver their services.

HP and BMC will be facing competition from independent software vendors (ISVs) such as Kaseya and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors such as Service-Now.