BMC Software – An American Software Company Founded By Former Shell Oil Employees.

BMC Software is an American company and it is one of the leading developers and providers of independent system software. The company’s headquarters is based in Houston, Texas, and has several offices both in the state and overseas. BMC Software operates worldwide and some major markets include Tel Aviv, Israel, Germany, France, Indian, and Singapore.

The company mainly offers Software as a Service (SaaS) and on-premise software and services. It has a great impact on today’s cloud computing and IT management and automation sector. BMC Software is a privately held company and it generates annual revenue of more than $2 billion. It has around 6,000 employees and made many significant acquisitions between 1994 and 2000.

The Founding Story of BMC Software

The three founders of BMC Software are Scott Boulette, John Moores, and Dan Cloer. All three co-founders were former employees of Shell Oil when they started working on this new project. They kept the name of the company after the initials of their surname. Moore got the idea of developing a new software when he worked as a programmer with Shell Oil. During those days, the software that dominated the market and business was mainly written for IBM mainframes. Moores wanted to develop a more efficient version of this software that would compress data streams and speed up the compression process.

He was successful in building the software and he named it 3270 Optimizer. This was the first product of BMC Software and to make this a huge success, Moores hired the best software developers and paid them generous packages. But this is also one of the reasons why profit margin was very low for the company. But, Moores brought in a very powerful team and within few years with innovative marketing methods, it started catching the interest of many venture capitalists.

Growth and Expansion

In 1982, a venture capitalist called Jacqueline Morby took interest in the company and gave Moores some direction on how to increase the profit. After four years, BMC started making 20 percent profit of the annual revenue and 30 percent of its total customers were international clients. In 1988, BMC Software announced its IPO and it was listed on NASDAQ. The business became very profitable and by the next year, the sale jumped from $93 million to $139.5 million.

During this time, BMC Software hopped into an acquiring spree and started with Trimar Software Systems Ltd and Trimar Software International Ltd. In 1991, the company acquired Integrity Solutions followed by Patrol Software in 1994. In 1996, it acquired two companies, namely, HawkNet and PEER Networks but the price was not revealed. In 1997, it acquired Data tools and in 1998 bought Boole & Babbage and BGS Systems. It acquired New Dimension Software in 1999 and Optisystems in 2000.

Privatization

In 2013, BMC Software announced that it was selling the company to a group of major private equity investments groups. The deal was closed at $6.9 billion. In September 2013, the process was finally complete and BMC became a privately held company. In 2018, BMC was acquired by a global investment firm, KKR & Co Inc.

John Moores – The Mastermind Behind BMC Software

John Moores is a famous American entrepreneur and philanthropist who is well-known as the founder of BMC Software. He went to Texas A&M University but dropped out and became a programmer at IBM. Later he went to the University of Houston and completed his bachelor’s degree in economics. Apart from co-founding BMC Software, he was also the lead venture capital financier for Peregrine Systems. After Moores founded BMC Software in 1980 he was the CEO of the company till 1987.

Ayman Sayed – CEO

In 2019, Ayman Sayed became the new president and CEO of the company. Before joining BMC Software, Ayman served as the president and CPO at a Fortune 500 company called CA Technologies. He also has prior work experience at Cisco Systems where he was given the position of senior vice president.