Bankers for the business software maker have approached potential suitors including large technology companies and private equity firms to gauge their interest in buying all or part of the company, the people said.

BMC Software's shares rose 3.2 percent to $42.84 in afternoon trade on the Nasdaq after news of the potential sale was first reported by The Wall Street Journal. At that price, BMC has a market value of a roughly $6.9 billion.

BMC, which makes software for storage management, database performance and data recovery, was under pressure to sell itself earlier this year from Elliott Management, a $20 billion activist hedge fund run by Paul Singer.

BMC could not immediately be reached for comment, and Elliott declined to comment.

Elliott and its associates collectively owned 7.7 percent of BMC stock as of Aug 2.

The people asked not to be identified because the matter is not public.

In July, BMC said it had reached an agreement with Elliott and would expand the size of its board to 12 directors, adding two Elliott nominees.

During its proxy campaign, Elliott had presented a list of potential buyers for the company. The list included International Business Machines Corp, Oracle Corp and Dell Inc, and private equity firms KKR & Co LP, Blackstone Group LP and Bain Capital.

(Reporting by Soyoung Kim and Nadia Damouni in New York; Additional reporting by Sayantani Ghosh in Bangalore; Editing by Leslie Adler)

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