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"We set out to drive down the issues and incidents within our environment and improve our mean time to resolution," says Mahendra Durai

Every year, InfoWorld recognizes IT projects for their innovative use of information technology to drive concrete business benefits. BMC’s IT organization was selected as one of this year’s InfoWorld 100 Award Winners based on the pioneering use of data-center automation technologies to manage service availability and up-time.

Join us as we talk with Mahendra Durai, Vice President for Infrastructure and Operations at BMC Software to learn more about the  InfoWorld 100 Award for BMC Software.

Questions

1. What does it mean for BMC to receive this award?
   
2. What BMC products did the award recognize?
   
3. Would you talk a minute about the background behind these innovations?
   
4. What do these innovations  mean to BMC customers?
   

Resources

Read about the InfoWorld 100 Award

Learn more about BMC's Data Center Automation

Learn more about BMC Atrium CMDB

Now mobile users can keep up with the latest BMC Software news, blogs, podcasts, videos and Thought Leadership white papers with the BMC Today iPhone app. It's Free Download it now.

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"BMC Atrium Discovery customers have every reason in the world to be absolutely thrilled ...  we're bringing them the best of breed discovery and dependency mapping technology," says Colin Fletcher.

In today’s highly complex and rapidly evolving computing environments, having deep visibility and clear understanding of the critical business services and their associated relationships to specific IT resources is fundamental. Especially if you want to improve service quality, minimize risk and reduce IT costs. BMC's October 2009 acquisition of Tideway Systems Limited (Tideway), a leading provider of IT discovery solutions, enhances BMC’s Business Service Management (BSM) platform and helps organizations minimize the risks associated with business-critical initiatives such as data center consolidation, virtualization and compliance.

Join as as we talk with Colin Fletcher,  Solutions Marketing Manager for BMC Atrium, as we find out just how the Tideway product fits in with BMC's Business Service Management (BSM) platform and why Atrium customers in particular are so excited abou this addition to the BMC product line.

Bio

Colin Fletcher is the Solutions Marketing Manager for BMC Atrium at BMC Software, where he serves as a trusted advisor, evaluating business
and technical challenges from a BSM perspective.

Questions

1. You've had quite an involvement in Tideways Systems? Can you give us a brief overview of this product?
2. What is it about what they have there that's just so strong?
   
3. How does Tideway fit in with the BMC product line?
   
4. How does this affect Atrium users in particular?
5. What about the CMDB?
   
6. How does this acquisition change the landscape for customers with virtual servers?
   
7. What are you hearing from users? What are they especially happy about related to the Tideway acquisition?

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Whether you already have in mind a grand plan for implementing your CMDB, or you don’t have a clue where to begin, this podcast is for you. Tom Bishop, chief technology officer at BMC Software, has helped implement more than 500 CMDBs at various customer sites, so he is well-positioned to offer advice that can help your CMDB implementation run much more smoothly.

In this podcast, Tom reflects on the origins of the CMDB, dangerous implementation approaches that you should avoid, the "cake-eater" approach, and the significance of a post-implementation maintenance plan. He also covers the topic of auto, and manual, discovery. So before you begin implementing your CMDB, take some time to listen to this podcast. After all, another company’s mistakes don’t have to be yours.

Resources

Bio

Tom Bishop was named one of the top 25 CTOs by InfoWorld Magazine in 2004, and is a well-known industry innovator who holds nine patents in fault tolerant computing and in leading the development of industry standards such as the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) and POSIX.

CMDB Series: Podcast interview with Kia Behnia, Chief Architect at BMC Software, Inc.

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What is the CMDB? The configuration management database is that necessary component that will soon be in all enterprises of any significant size, according to Kia Behnia, Chief Architect for BMC Software, Inc. In this podcast, Behnia discusses the genesis of the CMDB, which revolves around change and configuration management and ITIL best practices. The CMDB, he says, is the "single source of truth" for IT data and processes. It provides an elegant mechanism for tracking changes required for compliance and auditing.  And, it connects people to various systems and services being used in the enterprise.

Kia's key takeaway? Keep in mind the critical components of a successful CMDB implementation:

Resources

BMC Atrium Configuration Management Database (CMDB)

Bio

Kia Behnia has helped develop the company's Change and Configuration Management (CCM) strategy; prior to joining BMC Software he was CTO for Marimba, and earlier in his career, he was one of the principal technologists for Tivioli Systems.

Play Podcast  (Right click to download)

It's been noted, among other things, that BMC Software's Tom Bishop plays a mean game of pool, can pilot a private plane, and has a brain "the size of a planet" (hmmm). Add to this, extensive industry experience and technical expertise (from IBM to Vieo, and more), and you're describing someone who knows what they want to say, why they want to say it, and yes, just exactly what it is they are talking about.

And these days, this plain-spoken CTO is talking about BMC Software's CMDB, called "Atrium," arguably the crown jewel in the company's highly successful Business Service Management (BSM) strategy for IT. Are you seriously considering using ITIL to bring discipline and best practices to your IT organization? You probably already know that the CMDB is a critical component for ITIL to work. But do you have an eye for the elegantly simple BSM strategy that says, get a clear picture of what you want to achieve for your business first, then implement the applications and systems you need to get that result? The CMDB is a key component of this as well.

To hear Bishop tell the story, it's really rather straightforward: There are lots of different companies that want to achieve BSM, and each one has its own unique circumstances, concerns, strengths, and so on. So it makes sense that each company needs to take its own path toward BSM, its own Route to Value (RTV), in BSM terms. Each of these RTVs are comprised of different components -- applications, systems, and the like -- and with the CMDB, you can manage these components in a coherent and consistent manner.

"Atrium technology," says Bishop, "is actually a collection of technologies intended to drive integration across the various RTVs and across BMC products implemented within the RTVs to provide a common infrastructure. This allows you to start with any of the RTVs," he adds, "then evolve and build in whatever direction makes sense for you, without losing integration and consistency."

For an organization using distributed computing, mainframe technologies, or both, to begin creating its own, unique story of going from where it is, to where it wants to be in terms of efficiency, return on investment, and customer satisfaction, the CMDB is a critical prerequisite. BMC Software recognized this first, affirms Bishop, and rolled out an industrial-strength CMDB that can deliver on the promise of BSM.

Resources

Why You Need a Configuration Management Database - Where ITIL Fits In (PPT:   809 KB)

Bio

Tom Bishop was named one of the top 25 CTOs by InfoWorld Magazine in 2004 and is a well-known industry innovator who holds nine patents in fault tolerant computing and in leading the development of industry standards such as the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) and POSIX.