BMC Software Tuesday announced it had acquired a maker of knowledge management software in a deal that would equip BMC with service-desk capabilities that it plans to incorporate into its Remedy and Magic product suites.

KMXperts, based in American Fork, Utah, develops products to help IT support personnel access information about common incidents or customers. Knowledge management products capture and store data, making make it available to an organization via tools such as natural language search.

"Providing world-class knowledge management to reduce incident volume and improve service levels is the latest way BMC will help our customers increase the strategic business value of their service desks," said Jim Grant, vice president and general manager of the Service Management Business Unit at BMC Software.

According to Gartner Vice President and Research Director Kris Brittain, effective service desk and self-service products should be built with knowledge management technologies. "To be effective, develop solutions on a mature, proven and well-defined problem and knowledge management solution," he wrote in Gartner"s July report, "Implementing Web Chat Improves IT Service Delivery."

BMC also this week announced four products based on the KMXperts knowledge platform: BMC Remedy Knowledge Management and BMC Magic Knowledge Management (formerly KMR and KMM Professional from KMXperts), and BMC Remedy Knowledge Management Self Service and BMC Magic Knowledge Management Self Service (formerly KMR and KMM Web Self Service from KMXperts).

KMXperts has been a BMC Software partner since 2003 and has about 50 customers. Out-of-the-box integrations for BMC Remedy Help Desk and BMC Magic Service Desk Suite are available today, according to BMC.