(Boole & Babbage, Inc., San Jose, CA) An earlier leader in availability and service level management software for distributed systems. Founded in 1967, Boole & Babbage was the oldest publicly traded independent software vendor in the systems management industry. Its products were used by large manufacturing companies, government, financial institutions, airlines, IT outsourcers and utilities. In late 1998, it merged with BMC Software, which combined two of the leading providers of enterprise management software. See BMC.