BDNA continues growth surge as channel activities expand

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1 BDNA continues growth surge as channel activities expand Analyst: Dennis Callaghan 22 Jul, 2015 BDNA is enjoying another burst of growth as its integration partnerships with companies like ServiceNow and HP begin to pay off. The company is looking to drive more business through the channel, and its partners are stepping up to the plate. All of this activity makes BDNA a hot acquisition target. The 451 Take We've chronicled BDNA's steps and missteps over the past eight years but the company clearly seems to have things moving in the right direction now. Its message is resonating where it should, in the enterprise user base of vendors like ServiceNow and HP. Other vendors and service providers are recognizing the value of its asset data management offerings, and BDNA's channel profile is growing as a result. One of these vendors that BDNA is working with should eventually see the value of bringing this technology in-house via acquisition. Context We've watched BDNA come into its own over the past few years, and the company is continuing that upward trajectory. It reported that revenue more than doubled in the first quarter of this year over the same period last year as the number of customer transactions climbed by 60%. That would be a faster growth rate so far this year as sales in all of 2014 jumped by 40% over Increased channel activity on top of a strong relationship with cloud ITSM juggernaut ServiceNow is driving much of those gains. The company has had a minor reshuffling of its executive team, with longtime CTO Walker White Copyright The 451 Group 1

2 promoted to president, where he will assume an expanded role in guiding business strategy. BDNA turned to its customer ranks to supplant White's technology leadership, hiring Jay Scroggins as executive VP of engineering and operations. Scroggins deployed BDNA's software in his previous role as senior VP for enterprise architecture at Wells Fargo. With its channel business expanding, BDNA also hired veteran channel executive Tina Jones as executive VP of business development. Jones most recently ran channel alliances at Jive Software and has held similar roles at Aruspex, FICO, Corticon Technologies, Cognos OnDemand, Unicorn Solutions and Informatica, going back the past two decades. Cofounder Constantin Delivanis continues to lead BDNA as CEO. The Mountain View, California-based company has about 150 employees altogether. It claims more than 300 direct clients, most of them large enterprises, which naturally have bigger, more complex IT asset environments and thus a greater need to manage IT asset data. Products Technopedia remains BDNA's flagship offering. It's a constantly updated repository of market data license information, release numbers, support dates, M&A information, etc. on enterprise software and hardware. Technopedia tracks 1.2 million products and 57 million data points, numbers that are constantly increasing. To that, BDNA adds Normalize for IT data normalization, Discover for discovery, and Analyze for analysis of IT asset data. Normalize, which ensures that all IT asset data in Technopedia conforms to the same format, was recently updated to add compatibility for content packs for Common Platform Enumeration and Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures, as well as DejaCode OpenSource and Windows Server The update is designed to help IT professionals discover security vulnerabilities, support open source systems and migrate from legacy systems. Partners We've written before about BDNA's growing relationships with ServiceNow and HP, both of which refer IT service and asset management customers to the company. Last year, those two referral programs accounted for about 35% of BDNA's revenue. The company hosted a customer dinner at ServiceNow's recent Knowledge15 conference that 120 people from joint ServiceNow-BDNA customer organizations attended. It reports about $6m in its sales pipeline just from the new connections it made with ServiceNow customers at the Knowledge14 conference. Copyright The 451 Group 2

3 BDNA's relationship with HP was recently expanded to support integrations of Technopedia with HP Configuration Management System, Asset Manager and Universal Discovery. Previously, BDNA was only part of HP's Marketplace Referral Program for IT asset management. In addition, BDNA added IT portfolio management software firm MEGA International as an integration partner. MEGA's HOPEX IT Portfolio Management software will use BDNA's up-to-date technology lifecycle information so that MEGA customers can better manage technology obsolescence and vendor support changes. Another key integration partner is IT business management SaaS vendor Apptio, which is making Technopedia's market data available to its customers, giving them better insights on the state of their IT investments. BDNA has formed similar partnerships with IT product evaluation engine TechStacker and IT data collector Rimo3. New service-provider partners include Netherlands-based UMBRIO and Sweden-based Advania. Umbrio is deploying BDNA's software with HP asset management implementations. Advania is employing BDNA with ServiceNow implementations. All in all, the channel accounts for about 12% of BDNA's business. The company is trying to grow that to 20%. Competition The closest competitor to BDNA is Blazent with its CMDB data-accuracy software. BDNA acknowledges some competition with Blazent in data normalization, particularly for IT service management (ITSM) migration projects. Blazent considers BDNA more complementary, with Technopedia a rich data source for its own IT data analytics. License managers such as Flexera and 1E can be competitive with BDNA's Normalize for Purchase Orders offering. But these and other IT asset management firms are more integration partners than rivals for BDNA. BDNA says it is building an integration to Flexera. 1E executives recently told us that they view BDNA as a data partner as well. Dell KACE, LANDesk, Microsoft and Symantec's Altiris are also strong players in IT asset management and can be competitive with BDNA, though BDNA can and is used alongside all of them as well. Express Metrix's Express Software Manager is, like Technopedia, a comprehensive IT asset data catalog, though it's more focused on the desktop than the datacenter. This product is now owned by ITSM provider Cherwell. Copyright The 451 Group 3

4 All of the Big Four IT management framework vendors BMC, CA Technologies, HP and IBM acquired discovery engines some time ago. With its Atrium CMDB and the discovery assets it obtained when it bought BDNA rival Tideway Systems in 2009, BMC would be the closest competitor here, though Technopedia is often embedded into these products at many BDNA customer sites. But discovery isn't a chief market for BDNA: some 60% of its customers use their own discovery tools with Technopedia. SWOT Analysis Strengths Weaknesses BDNA's revenue has increased considerably this year over last year. The company is finding a lot of vendors that want to work with it. When fast-growing ServiceNow and giant HP are sending a lot of customers your way, you're in a pretty good spot. We hate to harp on the past, but this is a company that's taken a lot of twists, turns and missteps to get to this point, even if it is on steadier ground now. The fact that no other player we know of does quite what BDNA does makes us wonder how large the market is for its technology. Opportunities Threats Channel development looks to be the best bet for BDNA to expand and it now has a seasoned channel executive calling those shots. The biggest threat is what customers have already deployed. If they've already made investments in discovery, asset management and license management, they may not see the value in an additional investment in BDNA. Blazent is a capable challenger in the data-normalization space, even though it sees BDNA as just another data source. BDNA's increasing success could inspire more startups to enter this space. Copyright The 451 Group 4

5 Reproduced by permission of The 451 Group; This report was originally published within 451 Research's Market Insight Service. For additional information on 451 Research or to apply for trial access, go to: Copyright The 451 Group 5