Based in Lexington, Mass., BladeLogic gears its products to a range of vertical companies.

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BladeLogic, a data center automation software company, prides itself on providing innovative software solutions that improve its customers’ data center operations by increasing stability and quality, decreasing application downtime and increasing productivity, all while reducing costs, the company says.

For example, the company says its customers can save millions of dollars annually and can complete tasks in 97 percent less time using BladeLogic’s data center automation software. “The three tenets that defined the early stages of the company – creativity, innovation and execution – continue to be the foundation of the company’s success,” President and CEO Dev Ittycheria acknowledges. “At the end of the day, it is the compelling economics that make Fortune 500 companies select [BladeLogic’s] software.”

With headquarters in Lexington, Mass., BladeLogic gears its products to Fortune 500 companies across a wide range of vertical markets, including financial services, government, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, technology and retail. The company’s customers include many sectors of the federal government – including the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Federal Trade Commission – as well as high-profile companies such as AT&T, Priceline.com, E*Trade, General Dynamics, Morgan Stanley Netflix, Starbucks and Walmart.com.

BladeLogic has a large presence around the world, especially in Europe, Japan, Korea and India. “We are always introducing new products and expanding our global presence,” Ittycheria says. “It speaks to the fact that this is a hot market and customers from all over the world are buying a lot of our software.”    

Solving Server Sprawl
One of the biggest problems IT organizations have faced in recent years is server sprawl as they transition their computing environment from mainframe and client/server architectures to distributed computing paradigm. For example, 10 years ago, a typical Fortune 500 company might have had a few hundred servers; today, it can have thousands of servers in several data centers around the world.

BladeLogic Operations Manager, the company’s flagship suite of data center automation solutions, enables IT organizations to manage all of their server and applications more efficiently. “We want to give IT organizations the ability to more easily manage their existing IT resources,” Ittycheria explains.

“The distributed computing architecture requires multiple servers to support a single application. The problem with that is customers end up with a lot of servers, all of which need to be configured in a very specific manner. Due to the complexity of managing thousands of servers, these organizations quickly find out that it is far cheaper to buy a server than it is to manage one. Our management software provides them with a more efficient and cost effective way of managing their servers and applications.”

In order to reduce the cost of managing and maintaining physical servers, many IT organizations today are consolidating their data center infrastructure through the growing trend of server virtualization, which enables IT organizations to house multiple operating systems on a single physical device. To address this trend, BladeLogic recently introduced Virtualization Manager, a software solution designed to manage virtual servers and applications.

Driven and Passionate
The company’s 337 employees have a lot of experience in the industry and are the main source of BladeLogic’s innovative products.

“We have people who know and understand data centers well,” Ittycheria says. “We look for experienced, driven people who are passionate about competing and winning.”

BladeLogic has a performance-based culture, Ittycheria says, based on working hard. The company implements a “promote from within” policy, which encourages employees to take on more responsibilities.
“We are very driven,” he stresses. “Being a small but fast growing company, we don’t have the luxury of vast resources. The reason we win is our innovation and our ability to move quickly. That’s why customers ultimately select us.”

Continuing Its Growth
Given the company’s market leadership position, technology advantage and its successful initial public offering in July 2007, Ittycheria expects BladeLogic to continue to grow. “We want to be the dominant player in the data center automation market,” he declares.