Since June, BMC Software's (NYSE:BMC) stock has been stellar, going from $20 to $32.94. The good news of its latest earnings caused the stock price to jump another 9.5%, and the company has lots of confidence that the good times will continue, announcing strong guidance for the upcoming quarter.

In the fiscal second quarter, BMC saw revenue growth of 7% to $386.7 million, beating its prior forecast of $365 million to $380 million. Year over year, net income increased from $43 million, or $0.19 per share, to $58 million, or $0.28 per share.

In fact, software license revenues surged by 18% to $137.9. This is particularly important, since these revenues lead to ongoing maintenance and service fees.

Why the big jump? BMC may be taking business away from CA (NYSE:CA), which has been mired in a restructuring and cannot seem to regain its footing. And, as I noted in a recent piece on CA, the company's troubles may continue for some time.

Over the past few years, BMC has been making key changes to its business, cutting costs and restructuring its sales force. It's also been investing in a new category of software: business service management (BSM). This software helps companies deal with the high costs of managing information technology (IT) assets. For example, Visa uses BMC's solutions to deal with its huge transactional volume.

But the big positive for investors is BMC's guidance. Management forecast revenue for the fiscal third quarter of $390 million to $410 million, with earnings of $0.35 to $0.39 per share. Full-year guidance is for earnings of $1.40 to $1.48, which compares to prior guidance of $1.28 to $1.38 per share.

No doubt, with investors focusing more on the technology sector, BMC will continue to attract attention. It has the necessary ingredients: ramping license revenue growth, a product line that is gaining traction, and a disciplined cost structure. In other words, BMC probably isn't done getting investors excited.

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Fool contributor Tom Taulli does not own shares mentioned in this article. He is currently ranked 111 out of 12,636 in CAPS. The Fool has a disclosure policy.