Operating income grew 28% to $134.8m, while diluted EPS rose 39% to $0.50. The company had total bookings of $431m and repurchased 2.1 million shares for $75m.

The company said license revenue declined 1% to $174m, maintenance revenue increased 1% to $257.4m, and professional services revenue declined 15% to $30.4m.

During the quarter, BMC Software and security software company McAfee formed an alliance to deliver proactive remediation of client security violations. It also partnered with storage and data management company NetApp to provide integrated service and storage offerings for cloud environments. It also acquired MQSoftware to expand its business management platform.

For the first half, BMC Software has reported a net income of $176.6m compared to net income of $71m a year ago. Revenue increased 1% to $911.8m.

Steve Solcher, chief financial officer at BMC, said: "We delivered solid second quarter financial results in what remains a challenging macroeconomic environment. We demonstrated significant sequential improvement as total bookings increased 10% and ESM license bookings increased over 50% compared to the first quarter. We also had strong growth compared to a year ago in total bookings, operating margin, earnings per share, and cash flow from operations."

Looking ahead to the fiscal 2010, BMC Software expects non-GAAP EPS in the range of $2.55 to $2.65 and cash flow from operations to be between $600m and $650m.

A service of YellowBrix, Inc.