The need for better management of batch processing drove development of the latest version of Control-M, a batch scheduling solution from BMC announced Monday at BMC UserWorld 2006 in San Francisco. When used in conjunction with BMC Batch Impact Manager, Control-M provides IT with a dashboard view of the business implications of batch processes.

"It looks at everything in the context of what the business service is," Steif said, so malfunctions in critical batch processes on which multiple applications depend can be identified and remedied promptly.

Control-M's key technology difference from other batch management solutions is that the new version is agentless, so software doesn't need to be installed to schedule and manage batch processes, Steif said. This will allow IT to manage more processes and lower the cost of ownership.

According to BMC, the average Web-based transaction involves more than 10 batch processes. However, management of batch processes operates at a layer beneath that of service management. In an SOA, for example, Web services management software might indicate that all services were humming along normally, but unless those services were operating on properly processed data, the business process could be in complete failure.