BMC closes on Compuware acquisition

On June 1, BMC announced the close of its amiable acquisition of Compuware. This is a significant event for BMC as it enables them to expand their reach deeper into the mainframe development space and empowers their customers. The combined companies now have significant potential to positively impact enterprise IT and mainframe operations and markets.

We will describe benefits and mention some cautions based on our discussions with BMC and Compuware executives. This is intended to help enterprises to better prepare for and understand the potential impact of this merger. We are planning a more in-depth report on how this and other significant acquisitions are advancing BMC’s market strategy and influencing its products available later this year.

Plans post-acquisition

Compuware will operate as a wholly-owned subsidiary of BMC. Chris O’Malley (current Compuware CEO) will continue to head the subsidiary. He will report directly to Bill Miller, President of BMC zSolutions. Bill heads the integration task force responsible for planning merger activities with Chris actively participating. Both executives have long, successful involvement with mainframes. In our opinion, they make an excellent team.

At the center of implementation planning for both BMC and Compuware, there resides a deep focus on and commitment to maintaining customer well-being and benefit. To that end, they have agreed to adhere to a policy of zero-disruption throughout the integration period. One manifestation of this is that the Compuware management team will remain with their current (pre-acquisition) performance objectives unchanged.

Looking further, both companies recognize that for themselves, as well as their customers, digital transformation will continue to be an on-going, high-priority activity. Both companies have made extensive progress in their own internal transformation efforts. The insight and knowledge gained from those experiences will be leveraged as they aid customers pursuing their own transformation projects.

To further enable successful transformation efforts, BMC will operate in accordance with their Autonomous Digital Enterprise strategy – which has been specifically designed to empower their customer’s success in this digital era. The strategy adheres to the following five characteristics:

1. Transcendent Customer Experience – create and assure exceptional, customer-focused experiences and interfaces.
2. Automation Everywhere – facilitate pervasive AI and data-supported automation of enterprise operations.
3. Enterprise DevOps – mainstream the mainframe with agile development products that are innovative, integrated, consistent, and contemporary.
4. Data-driven Enterprise – integrate data-driven operations with comprehensive, actionable reporting and feedback.
5. Cybersecurity – security is an essential, critical function, implement it as automated, intelligence-driven, and adaptive.

The current operating plan for both BMC and Compuware is to maintain a business-as-usual approach by following their customer procedures as they exist today. Each companies’ separate Sales and Support teams will remain as they are today. Compuware solution development operations will not change. They will continue their quarterly software releases schedule. BMC will evolve their release schedule to match.

What happens now?

We found BMC and Compuware to be straightforward and honest in their responses. The probable scenarios given here reflect our own opinions. Barring external disruptions, we foresee little deviation from this for the balance of the calendar year.

We expect that standard corporate functions, such as Legal and HR departments, will be the first to merge. Other standard cross-enterprise functions may alter processes or procedures over time. Customers may see changes when agreement processes are standardized. We do not foresee any disruptive actions.

Normal personnel turnover will continue. We do not foresee any exceptional activity. Policies and processes for hiring, retiring, and dismissal may or may not change. Either way, customers should not see any negative impact.

Since both BMC and Compuware are financially sound there exists no significant pressure for any radical action. We believe that BMC may allow the Compuware subsidiary to prepare its own financial plans and objectives subject only to the legal requirements for consolidating such information for SEC and stockholder reports. Financial planning targets for 2021 might change, but we have no data that would allow us to provide any helpful insight.

The respective product portfolios are highly complementary, with virtually no overlap. This is very good news. The sales, product development, and support functions will continue to operate relatively independently. BMC and Compuware are two long-term partners; both familiar with each other’s operations, any more significant integration can be expected to occur smoothly. As mentioned, BMC will adopt Compuware’s quarterly model for product development and release. We expect the model of adopting what is best from either companies’ processes will continue to benefit all.

The Final Word

This is the largest merger ever undertaken by BMC. Still, we believe BMC’s past successful record of acquisitions will expect they will continue that success with these mergers, (we see no reason why they shouldn’t) they are uniquely positioned to effectively assist customers in making the transition to Digital Enterprises.

BMC has an established record of identifying, even anticipating, and then filling major much-needed mainframe solutions. They have become effective at introducing and promoting innovative contributions that facilitate and enhance enterprise mainframe operations.

Compuware’s specialty has been in making rapid changes to mainframe solutions and then extending and evolving mainframe development processes, methodology, and applications. Compuware’s five-year history of quarterly updates brought them significant attention. Each company has an established record for innovative leadership. 

We have followed BMC and Compuware for some time. We observe as their respective visions and strategies evolved along complementary paths, even in similar directions. We think this contributes significantly to the potential for a successful merger. This is not a guarantee everything will be bliss. But we believe customers (shared, separate, and new) will find real benefits when the chose to work with the combined companies.

Our final take is that customers should be reassured that their relationship with Compuware and BMC will not be changing in the immediate future. Both companies are committed to being responsive to their customers. Jointly, they can provide enormous assistance to address their customers’ requirements for successful digital transformation. BMC and Compuware have a credible plan for their merger. We hope they succeed with minimal problems. Watch for further articles on their efforts.

Zapata Computing enabling Optimizable Quantum Solutions for the Enterprise!

 The application and commercialization of quantum computing continues to advance as the competition increases and the community of interest grows. To date, most of the attention has been focused on the competition to build a quantum computer that is robust, error-correcting, long-lived, scalable, and commercially accessible.

 A parallel effort underway aims to broaden and expand a quantum-educated user community. This includes developing the DevOps tools needed to create quantum computer applications. The result is an expanding eco-system of quantum products, tools, students, researchers, enterprise efforts, services, etc.

 The software effort has focused on development languages, API interfaces and tools that facilitate coding and communications between classical and specific quantum system architectures. Despite some efforts to assure a measure of software portability among existing architectures and products, no truly integrated, hardware agnostic development environment existed. Until now.

 With the introduction of Orquestra™, Zapata Computing radically upends and advances efforts to bring quantum computing to an even broader cross-section of the potential end-user market. Orquestra joins the limited number of existing Jupyter notebook services that allow users to compose workflows from any software library, then deploy them across a full range of quantum and classical devices. It uniquely allows for more scalability and flexibility across both quantum and “quantum-inspired” classical backends. Adjustments can be quickly made, run, and produce comparable results.

 It is the first platform to not only abstract the hardware’s idiosyncrasies, but also allow users to tune parameters of each device to maximize what the latest quantum devices can do—all within a scalable workflow system. It is in some measure, a step toward Linux for quantum hardware architectures.

 Much like early UNIX and today’s Linux platforms, it shifts the focus from adapting to the hardware to most effectively leveraging the unique strengths of the available existing hardware. Cloud-based accessibility to quantum computers makes it even more powerful. Zapata’s collection of algorithms, services, architecture, and software capabilities built around and into Orquestra, advances DevOps for quantum, even as the underlying infrastructure evolves and matures.

What is the big deal?

 For the first time, application developers do not have to fully commit to a single quantum architecture. They can develop software, run on different quantum hardware, compare results, and choose the optimal architecture for their application.

Secondly, developers can select and use code from a variety of sources, code libraries, etc. using well-known classical computing tools. Let’s take a closer look.

What’s going on

 Now and for the foreseeable future, quantum computers will operate in conjunction with classical computers. Each working on parts of the problem. Effective commercialization mandates that the classical computing DevOps tools be used with quantum computing. Today most only provide single-node hosted Jupyter notebooks. While fine for initial basic experimentation, these cannot scale to meet enterprise need. For that, vendors will have to provide compatible tools.

Figure 1 Qrquestra Unified Quantum Operating Environment

Implementing a quantum workflow involves the creation of a “circuit” processed on the quantum computer. Experience has shown there exists a direct link between a quantum computer’s architectural configuration and its efficiency at obtaining results.

Thus, matching problem circuit definitions to a specific quantum hardware configuration can yield results significantly more quickly and accurately. To date, much of the effort in application development has paired classical software with software specific to a single vendors’ quantum hardware. This works but tends to make performance comparisons and/or shifting “circuits” between different quantum computers a time-consuming, difficult process. By changing a few lines of code, Orquestra makes it faster, easier, and much more feasible.

 Zapata delivers a collection of products and support services that integrate quantum-specific functions with contemporary DevOps solutions and processes to build circuits from hardware “agnostic” to hardware specific, based on the user’s familiarity with backend devices’ strengths.

Users can build quantum workflows with real-world solutions that run on multiple quantum architectures and compare results. Clients can choose to develop using in-house infrastructure, Zapata Cloud, external Cloud (e.g. AWS, Azure, Rigetti, IBM, Honeywell, etc.) or any combination of these. Zapata collects data that can be used to compare and optimize performance.

Potential Use cases

 Every vendor is searching for the optimal use case that will demonstrate quantum superiority. Zapata is searching for real-world problem cases where a quantum computer is uniquely able to provide a superior answer more quickly and with fewer errors than today’s supercomputers. The focus is on actionable solutions to pressing problems.

 During April and May of this year, Zapata held intensive Orquestra training sessions for specially selected enterprise partners. The intent was to train staff so they can apply new research and science to begin building solutions to real-world business problems. There are now 100 or so staffs working to resolve problems in such areas as simulating chemical reactions (e.g. improve fertilizer efficiency), machine learning (e.g. improve accuracy and speed), and routing optimization (e.g. speeding calculations to dynamically optimize a salesman’s route[1]). Other areas of interest include finance (e.g. developing exotic derivative pricing models) and increasing pharma/drug effectiveness and efficacy (e.g. treatment, vaccines, etc.).

What sets Zapata Computing apart?

•  We use some of Zapata’s own words to summarize Orquestra’s unique capabilities:  Extensible: Developers can compose workflows from existing in-house tasks or use libraries (Zapata + open source). Mix and match modules written using popular quantum libraries and languages (Cirq, Qiskit, PennyLane, PyQuil). Build for any backend. Integrate with database endpoints.
•   Hardware Smart: Beyond hardware agnostic. Can be abstracted so non-quantum domain experts can be productive, by allowing designing workflows that both maximize specific device capabilities and allow benchmarking across devices.
• Reproducible: Build new or re-run existing workflows at scale and over time. Reproduce within team.
• Modular: Enable all team members who are focused on library coding, quantum science, databases, domain experts to contribute modularly to common efforts.
• Scalable: Manage complex data records, automate parallelization via container orchestration. Iterate at scale. Deploy across NISQ, quantum-inspired, and multi-cloud and hybrid cloud classical backends.

The Final Word

 Zapata’s solutions represent a major advance in the goals and thinking about commercializing quantum computing. Linux was an elusive prize for classical computing eager for vendor independence. It took decades to arrive as the commercial successor to Bell Lab’s Unix operating system. To have the Orquestra environment available this early in quantum computing’s lifecycle is somewhat amazing.

 Orquestra is a fully integrated software development environment with associated services that  permit more than just utilization of today’s quantum libraries and computers. It allows the user to match the architecture with function to get the best combination for overall performance.  The solution leverages existing DevOps tools and applications to allow construction of algorithms that run on existing quantum hardware to address real-life problems. It lowers cost and effort barriers for enterprises that need to become quantum-smart more than ever.

 A significant key to the success of Orquestra results from in-depth customer experiences and interactions. Zapata’s platform resulted from actively working with potential customers in-the-field as they confronted real business problems. Zapata products, attitudes and results reveal and reflect that their intense interest, hard-earned experience, and expertise is in addressing the most near-term problems that quantum and quantum-inspired devices will be helpful in solving. 

 Zapata clearly takes pride in the research and academic credentials of their staff. They have upwards of 20 PhDs and plenty of sophisticated, well-published, and well-cited researchers. However, this is no collection of lab-bound researchers and abstract theoreticians. The Zapata Computing staff we met exhibited a solid real-world focus on prompt delivery of actionable results. We believe their contributions will enable and speed major advances toward the commercialization of enterprise quantum computing.

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[1]  Classical problem in Operations Research AKA the Traveling Salesman problem – the subject of my Master’s in Operations Research thesis years ago.