BMC, through their Remedy solution have long been the 800 pound gorilla in the service desk market.  Their acquisition of the remedy technology from Peregrine is arguably one of the most successful acquisitions in IT service management.  It certainly transformed BMC and provided the platform for their successful BSM strategy.

However, in the last few years the success was starting to loose its luster from more innovative competitors who could offer service desk solutions at a fraction of the cost and with more flexibility thanks to a SaaS delivery model.    I know of a number of companies who were able to move from Remedy to such solution for a fraction of a Remedy upgrade.  We also saw traditionally exclusive BMC partners sign up with additional solutions to fill this gap.

Todays announcement at least shows the market that BMC is serious about filling this hole and moving into this space.  The choice of the SFDC platform also seems like a good choice, not only allowing BMC to get their solution to market quickly, but also to exploit existing SFDC customers who want to move to an enterprise service desk but also integrate it with their sales automation solution.  

It will be interesting to see if BMC have left this too late or not.   Certainly if they had made this announcement two years ago they could have capitalized on the huge momentum behind Remedy.  However, vendors such as Service Now, Netsuite and the like have started to gain market share - will BMC be able to stop the erosion and win back some of those customers?   Probably its really down to how willing BMC are to cannibalize the existing Remedy install base and let them move to the new solution in a cost effective manner, and provide seamless migration from existing Remedy solutions and the new SaaS based offering.  

This announcement certainly makes the Service Desk market more interesting again.