Open Source Weblog

There's little detail yet on what that strategy involves but in hiring "whurley", as he's known, the company is preparing to become a serious open source vendor.

Hurley said his job is to "architect an open source strategy that makes both BMC and the open source community at large successful; really forge the collaboration between the company and the community."

"My job is simply about balance," he added. "A few companies have done little more than use open source as a marketing ploy or an exit strategy for under-performing product lines, and BMC wants to do open source right, and that's the main reason I am in this position."

Hurley was most recently chief technology officer at open source systems management vendor Qlusters. You can read his thoughts about how the systems management market is perfect for open source in our feature from last year.

He is also the founder of the openSIMS open source security management project and last year co-founded the Open Management Consortium to further the adoption of open source systems management software and develop open standards.

While it is unclear at this stage how BMC's open source plans will develop, the company has certainly signaled its intention to be taken seriously in hiring Hurley.

We have noted on a few occasions the potential for open source to have a significant impact on the systems management market. BMC clearly sees the same thing.

There are some big egos in this space with HP, CA and IBM along with BMC at the top of the pile. What happens next could be interesting...