Houston-based BMC plans to make Identify Software the centerpiece of a new business unit that will also be responsible for a line of transaction management tools introduced by BMC in February. BMC expects to complete the acquisition of Identify Software by midyear, and a company spokesman said more details about the new unit will be disclosed at that time.

Bob Beauchamp, BMC's president and CEO, said the group will offer tools for monitoring transaction-based applications and for identifying bottlenecks and errors and pinpointing their causes. "The reason we are buying Identify is, we couldn't figure it out," Beauchamp said. "They figured it out before we did."

Briefly noted

SAP AG last week said it plans to more than quadruple the staff at its research and development facility in Shanghai by 2008. The workforce at SAP China Labs , which develops software for small and midsize businesses in Asia, Europe and North America, is expected to increase from about 400 people to 1,800.

Toshiba Corp. has won an intellectual property lawsuit in Tokyo District Court against the Japanese unit of Hynix Semiconductor Inc. Toshiba was awarded Y7.8 million (US$66,000) in damages plus an injunction barring Seoul-based Hynix from selling certain memory chips in Japan. Hynix said it will appeal the ruling that it infringed on three Toshiba patents.