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"I think there is a lot of hardware on the floor of most data centers that is underutilized both on the server and the storage side,"says Mark Settle.

How is the credibility of your IT organization among your R & D colleagues? Are you able to deliver what they need on time, every time? How well are you using your server inventory across locations? Are you looking to reduce your footprint in your server room, lower maintenance and labor costs, while better using your existing server space?

Join us as we talk with Mark Settle, Chief Information Officer at BMC Software, and find out how BMC's own virtualization project helped the company became even more responsive to business needs, while reducing costs and increases productivity.

Bio

Mark Settle is the Chief Information Officer at BMC Software. Mark joined BMC in June 2008. He has served as the CIO of four Fortune 300 companies: Corporate Express, Arrow Electronics, Visa International, and Occidental Petroleum. He is a former Air Force officer and NASA Program Scientist.

Questions

• What else was unique about this, especially as compared to what you've done in the past?
• When you first started the project, how did you describe the goals to Senior Management? Did you end up meeting or exceeding their expectations, how did all that go?
• Why didn't you think the 18 to 1 ratio was possible? What made it possible?
• When we talk about the process of configuring these new tools for improvement and productivity of the virtual servers, is there a kind of cookbook approach that will work? Does it have to be totally unique for every situation?
• So stepping back, what was the learning curve like?
• What are some of the key things you learned along the way? Were there some unexpected benefits?

Resources

BMC Industry Insights: Uncover the Benefits of Virtualization (pdf)