CIOs: Get ready for the "next big thing"

Mercury Interactive has unveiled Topaz Business Availability, which it terms a "digital cockpit" for IT and line of business professionals. The product is the first offering in Mercury's Optane suite of products aimed at what is being touted as a new market - business technology optimisation (BTO).

The company has long been known as a provider of tools for testing, tuning and performance management and denies the latest release is a re-packaging of existing products. Mercury will work with Accenture to roll out the technology to (normally large) users looking to get more from their IT investments.

Andy Crosby, European product marketing director at Mercury Interactive, told silicon.com: "Fifty per cent of capital expenditure goes on IT at many large companies and research shows at least 20 per cent of IT budgets are wasted annually. Businesspeople want to know whether IT is doing a good or bad job."

Mercury claims this waste, the need for clarity and increased IT complexity caused by things such as remote working and the rise of web services means there is a wide need for BTO.

Forrester and Gartner are two prominent analyst houses backing this categorisation - which Mercury believes will become as well-known as ERP or CRM - the latter pointing out the close link between better IT processes and better business processes.

Forrester, commissioned by Mercury Interactive, has carried out a survey of 122 senior IT decision-makers in Global 2000 companies in North America and Europe showing the majority "struggle to meaningfully measure and manage business applications".

However, Clive Longbottom, senior analyst at Quocirca, said what BTO ultimately relies on is business process management, an area other companies such as Business Objects, Staffware and webMethods are trying to move into.

"You can optimise the technology all you want but if the original business processes are no good, then you can throw all the Mercury tools you like at ERP or CRM systems and it won't help," he said.

"It comes back to that now out of fashion phrase BPR - business process re-engineering."

Mercury admits its latest offering and the BTO category are driven by downturn belt-tightening but denies its cockpit will lead to many organisations canning ineffectual software. Mercury's Crosby added: "If something's so bad it needs to be thrown away, it's normally been thrown away before we come in - they can tell."

Pricing for Topaz Business Availability, generally available in Q4, depends on number of applications and processes supported and starts at $250,000.