This week Nimsoft Inc., a Redwood City, Calif.-based provider of IT monitoring software upped the ante in its bid to compete with the big systems management vendors by acquiring Indicative Software, a maker of software for business service management, application performance management and infrastructure management.

Nimsoft CEO Gary Read says the deal should serve as notice to the likes of BMC, CA, HP and IBM. “Customers are not happy with the high price, long deployment times and professional services costs of the big four vendors,” Read said. “With this acquisition, we’ll offer tools that provide comprehensive monitoring.”

Nimsoft’s flagship product, the NimBUS platform, supplies a range of monitoring capabilities including server, database, service level management and application management across both physical and virtual infrastructures. Indicative’s product suite provides IT operations with monitoring capabilities for service delivery – taking stock of things such as real-time key performance indicators, transactions and end-user performance. When combined, Read says, the two companies’ products complement each other nicely to offer customers a range of monitoring tools.

From a strategic perspective, Read expects the deal will deliver ample growth opportunities. “We want to sign on more new customers faster,” he said. “At Nimsoft, we’ve been signing 150 to 200 new customers every year and we want to accelerate that momentum.” Many of those customers, Read asserts, will come at the expense of the big four vendors.

Of course it’s Read’s job to wax enthusiastically about the strategy behind Nimsoft’s acquisition, but what do the analysts think? While considerably more tempered in his opinion, David Williams, research vice president at Gartner, said Nimsoft’s acquisition of Indicative “is a very good move.”

“This acquisition will enable Nimsoft to move into the area of business service management – an area the company hasn’t been in before,” Williams said. “This will provide customers with much more contextual business service-based information.” For example, rather than just provide customers with how various components in the infrastructure are impacted during a problem, Nimsoft’s tools can provide insight into how the components are impacting a specific business service.

As for competing against the entrenched bigger vendors, Williams says that Nimsoft certainly has a shot. “Their products are cheaper, easy to implement and less complex to manage,” he said. “Nimsoft has been extremely effective at winning business in a highly competitive market space.”