"Having transparency into the IT budget as well as the associated projects is more important now that it has been even in the recent past," says Gene Leonardi.

How are you managing the business aspect of IT in your organization? Do you know the total cost of ownership on your IT projects?  Do you know how much you're spending, where you're spending it, and for whom in the organization you're spending your IT dollars? How are you keeping tabs on your compliance requirements? Listen in as we talk with Eugene Leonardi, Worldwide Sales Director of BMC IT as we discuss BMC's IT Business Management Suite and discuss some ideas for effective ways to manage the business of IT.

Bio

Gene Leonardi is Worldwide Sales Director of BMC IT, running sales for BMC’s Service Resource Planning products. Gene joined BMC software in June 2008 following BMC’s acquisition of his company, ITM Software, where he was head of sales and member of the executive committee.  ITM Software was an independent software company that specialized in developing and implementing IT Business Management applications in the US, Europe and Japan.  BMC acquired ITM to complement its comprehensive Business Service Management suite of applications.

Questions

1. Give us  a brief overview of what BMC's IT Business Management Suite is all about.
2. So I see this is around the business aspects of running IT. More specifically what does this suite consist of?
3. This seems like that would be really useful for putting together an internal budget for projects that are coming down the line, and are being demanded by business groups, but people are saying "we don't have the resources for that."
4. This sounds really helpful, but it also sounds a lot like what other vendors call Project and Portfolio Management or PPM. What's the difference between what BMC sells and PPM?
5. You mentioned Gartner a little bit earlier. In Gartner's most recent Magic Quadrant Report on PPM, I see that BMC's PPM is in the top right quadrant, along with the "Best-of-Breed Vendors."<
6. These days, when 50 to 60 percent of IT budgets are going to vendors outside of the organization, how does vendor resource management help a CIO address those costs?
7. With CIOs more responsible than ever before for testing compliance on a regular basis, how does Service Resource Planning help the CIO keep tabs on the various aspects of compliance?
8. OK, there's a whole lot of functionality here, how does the customer know where to start? There's five different packages. How big of an effort is this to get started, and how do you dig in?
9. So, this Suite sounds great, but does it leverage the CMDB?




Resources




Managing the Business of IT: Maximizing the Power of Service Resource Planning, the Next Step in Business Service Management (pdf)