Mercury Interactive encourages IT department 'centres of excellence'

Mercury Interactive (MI) is banging its business technology optimisation (BTO) drum with the announcement of 23 enhancements to or additions to its product portfolio, based around four major ‘centres of excellence’. One of its major areas of focus has become IT governance.

Over the past year, with the help of analyst houses such as Gartner and Meta, MI has preached BTO, which can be seen as sweating IT assets rather than buying more – a message that has hit home in departments with frozen or reduced budgets.

The Mercury Optimization Center approach is about best practice in IT in large user organisations, as seen with support today from companies such as MasterCard International and AXA Financial.

Today’s announcements are also about building on recent acquisitions, especially that of Kintana.

David Harrison, MD MI UK, said: “WorldCom, Enron, Sarbannes-Oxley, Basel II – against this backdrop we’re seeing a big jump in people wanting to explore [governance]. One of the messages is ‘Do this [MI approach] and you’re running an efficient IT shop’.”

Details about the Mercury Optimization Centers and the BTO Technology Blueprint are available from the company’s website www.mercuryinteractive.com.

MI says the move – repackaging and re-emphasising some of the company’s already successful offerings – was inspired by what some of its big, model customers have been doing.