Download Audio (10:37)

"We saw a shift in priorities (in the 2009 Survey) moving to efficiency and optimization," says Mike Moser.

Changing economic conditions have caused many IT organizations to refocus their priorities, say the results of the 2009 BMC Software Mainframe Survey. More than 1500 Survey respondents worldwide indicated that businesses have generally slowed investments in new applications and general purpose mainframe capacity. Many organizations are now focusing on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their current mainframe installations to leverage the platform as a consolidation platform and, most importantly, to position their companies for future growth. To find out more about issues and trends on the Mainframe, join us as we talk with Mike Moser, Product Management Director for Mainframe Service Management at BMC Software.

Bio

Mike Moser is a product management director and program executive within BMC Software’s Mainframe Service Management business unit. He focuses on issues related to reducing costs while improving IT efficiency and service delivery.

Questions

1. BMC recently completed its 2009 BMC Software Mainframe Survey.  Will you share a little background about this survey and the participants?
2. What were some of the key findings from the survey?
3. Were there any surprising responses or trends?
4. Why do you feel MIPS growth reduction surfaced as a rather high priority among respondents?
5. We noticed that 62% of the respondents were optimistic about future growth and expansion of the platform, why do you think that is?
6. Do you see any emerging trends related to IT management strategies?
7. What is BMC doing in response to what it has learned from this year's mainframe survey?

Resources

IT Survey Results: Mainframe Is an Engine of Business Growth and a Reason for Optimism (PDF)

Download Audio (11:10)

"Sometimes you can just stack up different parts of an application, you don't have to virtualize everything," says Ron Kaminski.

With Capacity Planning enjoying a resurgence of popularity in IT, are you behind the curve or ahead of the curve? Are you aware of how you are using your hardware? Do you know where all your dormant or orphaned applications are? Do you know why you'd want to be able to swiftly move from physical to virtual servers? Join us as we talk with Ron Kaminski, ITS Senior Consultant at Kimberly-Clark Corporation as we answer these questions and more in our conversation about planning for virtualization and consolidation.

Bio

Ron Kaminski is ITS Senior Consultant at Kimberly-Clark Corporation. Ron has lectured on capacity and performance management conferences around the world.

Questions

1. Capacity planning is seen as the key process that enables organizations to successfully consolidate or virtualize and maintain performance. What are you thoughts on this?
2. Can we assume that Kimberly-Clark has joined the ranks of companies with a consolidation and/or virtualization initiatives?
3. Will you describe your key challenges in your adoption of virtualization?
4. Are you using BMC Capacity Management to address your virtualization challenges?
5. There are a lot of people who are virtualizing or consolidating workloads for the first time, and are not trained or experienced as you are from a  capacity-planning perspective.  What should companies who are new to consolidation or virtualization look out for?
6. Will you discuss keys to successful virtualization?
7. Can you give listeners an idea of the benefits they’ll receive?  What benefits have you received, or expect to receive?
8. Why is Kimberley Clark using BMC for these initiatives?
   

Download Audio (11:16)

"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)

"It is equally important to think about the process as it is to know how to use the tool," says Jeff Turner.

Play Podcast (Right click to download)

How are your sys admins handling the ever increasing demands from the regulatory and compliance front? Are you still primarily working in reactive mode? What does it mean to think from the Blade Logic perspective? Whether you are an experienced Blade Logic user or are just considering this tool, you'll get some valuable insights into Blade Logic and into the  BMC BladeLogic 7.5: Foundations courses as we talk with Jeff Turner, Senior Technical Instructor at BMC Software.

Bio

Jeff Turner is a Senior Technical Instructor at BMC Software. He teaches the BladeLogic Foundations class internationally. Jeff has taught IT classes for more than 30 years; before joining BMC with the Blade Logic acquisition, he taught for Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, and other major IT corporations. Jeff is a Certified System Administrator on both Solaris and HP-UX. In addition to his teaching role at BMC, he is an advisor and subject-matter expert for the development of BMC BladeLogic courses.

Questions

1. Jeff, you've been teaching some courses on Blade Logic recently, would you like to fill us in a little bit about what you've been teaching?
2. What is it like hearing back from the guys later.  How are they responding to what they've learned in the class?  Do you have some examples of how the course has helped an organization address a specific problem?
3. Blade Logic is a very complex, yet versatile product. We hear you've been hearing a lot about some specific challenges that people are running into out there in the field. Can you share some examples with us?
4. In a previous conversation, you mentioned that it's like teaching people to think outside the box, from inside the box. Can you expand on that?
5. How do virtualization and cloud computing affect the approach to compliance and remediation?
6. Is there a certain size installation or environment where it would make sense to use Blade Logic? 
7. Why would someone take the Blade Logic class?
8. How are Blade Logic users approaching System Administration after taking the class?
9. Is there a pool of shared templates and shared experience the students can access later?
10. How can people find out more about the class

Resources

Details about the BladeLogic 7.5 Course.

"Financial Management people are a key component to organizational success with an ITIL initiative," says Anthony Orr.

Play Podcast   (Right click to download)

(20:43 minutes)

Is your company changing the way it does service management? Have you thought about how your finance department fits into your ITIL initiative? Is your finance department sitting on the steering committee? Are they asking if there is something they need to do differently?

Bio

Anthony Orr is Global Best Practice Director for Educational Services, at BMC Software. He has more than 25 years of experience in managerial, consulting, marketing, and technical positions for IT Service Management strategies and implementations. He is certified in Project Management (PMP), ISO 20000, and ITIL V2 Service Manager and ITIL V3 Expert levels. He is a senior examiner of ITIL V3 for APMG, has an Oracle Masters Certificate in database administration and application development, and holds a B.A.A.S. degree in computer information science.

Questions

1. Last time we spoke you mentioned that you’ve developed a course for Financial Managers about ITIL V3.  What led you to create a course for the finance folks?
2. Why would finance people care about IT Service Management and ITIL initiatives?
Where do Financial Managers actually fit into a company’s ITIL initiative?
3. Is financial management an ITIL component?
4. What are some of the biggest or more interesting questions that financial managers have had for you as relates to ITIL and ITSM
5. Where can people get more information about this?

"Customers see the benefit both in terms of operational savings to IT and dramatically improved service to their customers," says Jim Grant.

Part One—Service Desk Consolidation

Play Part One of the three-part series 15:58 minutes        OR   Listen to the entire Podcast  35:50 minutes

(Right click to download files)

Are you looking for a way to get a handle on what you actually have in service desks and the level of service to your business? Are you looking for operational savings? Would you like to improve your first-call resolution rates or improve service to your customers? How can Service Desk Consolidation help you with that? For answers to these questions and more, listen in as we talk with Glenn O'Donnell and Jim Grant about saving costs with service desk consolidation.

Bios

Jim Grant is the senior vice president of strategy and corporate development at BMC Software. Prior to his current position, Grant was senior vice president and general manager of the Enterprise Service Management business unit at BMC. Grant joined BMC in 2003 from Hewlett-Packard, where he was the vice president and general manager of the OpenView software business.

Glenn O'Donnell, Senior Analyst with Forrester Research, is widely regarded as a top thought leader in IT service management, IT operations, and the broader social implications of technology evolution. Glenn's specialties are in data center automation and operational excellence

Questions

1. I’ve been speaking to many IT executives lately and one topic they consistently bring up is around reducing the cost of IT.  Our first question is for Glenn O'Donnell, with Forrester Research. Where do you see the biggest cost saving opportunities for IT executives? IT executives have a mandate to reduce costs, but there is also a strategic opportunity here to reshape IT at the same time and improve service quality and delivery.  Glenn, what actions are companies taking in 2009 to reduce costs, but also position their organizations for growth in the future?
2. Our next question is for Jim Grant, with BMC. Many companies have realized enormous benefits, in both financial and in the quality of service from consolidating IT service desks. What key factors should be considered when consolidating multiple IT Help Desks into a single, centralized service desk?
3. A lot of companies have successfully consolidated their service desks around BMC Remedy. Jim, what real-world benefits have you seen your customers achieve when they consolidate the service desk?

Resources

BMC Service Desk Consolidation

"We in IT are in the business of change, but we don't like change ourselves. The world is changing and we need to be ready," says Glenn O'Donnell.

Part Three—Vendor Consolidation

Play Part Three of the three-part series 16:48 minutes    OR     Listen to the entire Podcast  35:50 minutes

(Right click to download files)

Are your vendors simplifying or complicating your life? Are your software license contracts under control? Do you know what your vendor deliverables are and how they are performing? If you need to get a better handle on what's going on with the myriad vendors you are working with, listen in as we talk with Glenn O'Donnell and Jim Grant about saving costs with vendor consolidation.

Bios

(See Part 1 for Bios and Photos)

Questions

1. Jim – With that much of the IT budget being spent on vendors, I would think Vendor Management is an area where customers could see some significant cost reductions from consolidation and managing their vendors and contracts better. What are some of the key features that enable companies to generate these types of savings? So Jim, BMC has helped many companies with vendor consolidation. Can you speak to a few examples that highlight the incredible savings these organizations have been able to attain?  
2. How is BMC Software best positioned to help IT organizations address their cost reduction mandates, but at the same time position them for growth in the long term?

Resources

BMC Vendor and Asset Management

"You need intelligence behind any kind of automation—a traffic light without intelligence behind it is just going to create traffic jams," says Dave Wagner.

Play Podcast   (Right click to download)

(17:22 minutes)

Capacity Management has long been viewed as a discipline for the mainframe to help control hardware costs. In today's environment—with a proliferation of servers and with distributed and virtual environments becoming more and more common—capacity management is even more relevant for all data centers and IT

We all want to optimize our existing IT investments and reduce operational costs, while maintaining performance and service-levels. While capacity management can certainly help organizations achieve these sometimes opposing goals, we can increase the likelihood of success by adopting a proven process.