In early February, I posted a blog entry - “Qlusters loses its open source leader,” about the departure of Qlusters CTO William Hurley (”whurley”). BMC Software issued a statement today concerning Hurley - Open Source Luminary whurley (William Hurley) Joins BMC Software as Architect and Strategist. I’ve had to sit on this news for some time due to an embargo.

It was inevitable for the big management companies to get involved in open source at some stage, but I wouldn’t have guessed that it would be BMC to make the first move. IBM with Tivoli seemed like the natural play due to IBM’s history with open source. HP and CA were less clear, but BMC? This is an interesting move that wil have repercussions in the software management sector. Don’t expect changes overnight, of course, but this is a first step for BMC, and I will be curious to see where this leads.

The CEOs of three open source management companies are with me at the 2007 Open Source Think Tank event in Napa, CA - Ranga Rangachari (GroundWork), Javier Soltero (Hyperic), and Bill Karpovich (Zenoss). I’ll have to get their take on this announcement.

Update 1 (03/09/07): BMC has posted a podcast interview with William Hurley.