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What BSM allows you to do—by doing enterprise level capacity management—is to really seek the most optimal disposition of funds allocated for assets, says Mark Settle.

Can you imagine saving more than five million dollars by reusing servers and dramatically reducing lead times for asset provisioning? What if you could also reduce power consumption and the requirements for floor space by about 20 percent? The IT organization at BMC Software has achieved these results and more with Business Service Management (BSM), a comprehensive and unified platform for running IT. Join us as we talk with Mark Settle, Chief Information Officer at BMC Software, about how BMC met its management challenges while achieving tremendous cost savings and improvements in IT effectiveness.

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

1. The IT organization at BMC Software has achieved some pretty impressive results using Business Service Management (BSM). Would you start us off by talking a little about those results and the timeframe for that achievement?
   
2. What are the key metrics CIOs can use to metrics to measure the effectiveness of their organization’s investments in technology?
3. How does ITIL fit into all of this? 
   
4. How is BSM beneficial in the current economy?
5. What about virtualization? Does it fit into the BSM equation?
   
6. How has BSM changed the way that IT looks at its role in the business?

Resources

BMC Industry Insights: CIO to CIO: Reaping the Benefits of Business Service Management (pdf)

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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)

"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.

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(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.

"With the mushrooming of the sheer number of moving parts in data centers, manual baton passing is just not going to cut it for this new world," says Kia Behnia.

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Over the last decade, IT infrastructures have become exceedingly complex, resulting in a highly interconnected network of new and powerful technologies. In a world where IT budgets are shrinking and mergers and acquisitions are more and more common, how do you get the most value from your existing IT resources yet maintain agility?

In this Podcast, with Kia Behnia, Chief Corporate Architect at BMC, find out how service automation can help you navigate the”perfect storm” of new technologies such as server virtualization, as well as legacy distributed and mainframe computing environments that support millions of transactions through multi-tiered applications.

Discover the pain points that can lead a company toward service automation, and how you can benefit from not only from thinking tactically about holes that automation can plug, but also by looking at areas the enterprise that can get the biggest bang for the buck both in the near term and long term. Behnia talks about looking beyond the individual elements that currently exist in the data center or IT environment, and looking at the many ways that automation can help prevent critical human error in the highly interconnected environment. Finally, he outlines ways companies can get service automation right, and leaves us with a summary of the three most critical benefits of service automation.

Bio

Kia Behnia Chief Corporate Architect at BMC responsible for virtualization management. over the last 2.5 years he’s also be responsible for setting BMC’s service automation strategy and direction. Prior to joining BMC Software, he was CTO for Marimba, and earlier in his career he was one of the principal technologists for Tivoli Systems.

At BMC. Kia Behnia offers strategies to reduce the frequency and scope of IT failures, better support dependent business services and drive down operating costs with the right change and configuration management approach and technology.

Questions

1. Are there any notable differences between data center automation and service automation? If so, what are the differences?
2. In your paper, you say you should start with identifying pain points. Do you have any examples of extremely painful starting points you’ve seen?
3. What types of holes might persist in an update and maintenance plan that you constantly have to “plug” with automation? Or is that too reactive of an approach?
4. What sorts of environments lend themselves really well to service automation? In other words, what do you consider to be “low hanging fruit?
5. What’s the number one thing an IT department can do to get automation right?
6. Any other stories you want to tell today, and do you have any remaining important points to leave with our listeners?

Resources

BMC Industry Insight: Five Steps to Gaining Control and Managing Complexity in the Data Center through Service Automation

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Just as today's enterprise is becoming more complicated than ever -- a mix of multiple platforms, vendor software, open source, mainframe, and distributed systems -- the quest for simplicity is becoming more important. Simplicity can mean the difference between an efficient and agile IT that provides great service, and an IT that is slow, costly, and ineffectual. Simplicity in managing your infrastructure can mean the difference between IT being a business drag or a business driver.

In this podcast interview, Scott Sloan, solutions marketing manager for infrastructure and application management for BMC Software, talks candidly about why it takes not just service level management, but unified service level management to drastically improve service quality and service responsiveness for the business. He also discusses ITIL, and why it is becoming such a cornerstone for global IT, about leveraging virtualization for the enterprise, and how the agent-based versus agentless debate may finally be settled. Join us as we talk with Scott Sloan about how simplicity rules in today's complex global IT environment.

Resources

Scott Sloan's Blog: Expanding Your Insight Into the End-User Experience

Bio

Scott Sloan is a Senior Manager in BMC Software's Solutions Marketing organization focusing on distributed database management and transaction management solutions. While at BMC the past 9+ years, he has held a variety of marketing positions based in the US and Europe. Prior to joining BMC, Scott worked as a systems integrator with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture) where he developed expertise in designing and building client/server applications. He has advanced degrees in business and Latin American studies.

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What is the number one factor that will drive the IT market forward over the next decade? According to the IDC*, it is utility computing, also referred to as capacity on demand or the real-time infrastructure. This is an area of IT that will help you control costs while increasing the number and quality of services delivered. In other words, you can dynamically align your resources with the needs of the business. Embracing this type of approach could actually help keep your company's IT department from being outsourced.

The fact that information technology (IT) plays a vital role in business success is unquestionable. But with IT resource utilization at barely 15 percent, companies don't get the kind of return they should for the dollars they invest. Fred Johannessen, vice president and program executive for data center solutions at BMC Software, discusses the changing resource requirements of business and describes virtualization as an enabler of utility computing. He shares some tips, pitfalls to avoid, and what it takes to finally match your resources to the business cycle.

*Crawford Del Prete, senior Vice President of hardware and communications at IDC.

Resources

Virtualization and Data Center Management:  Fred Johannessen's blog on TalkBMC

BMC® Performance Assurance® Suite for Virtual Servers

Optimization:  BMC® Performance Manager for Virtual Servers

Bio

Fred Johannessen is vice president and program executive for data center solutions at BMC Software and has been with BMC nearly 10 years, serving in a variety of executive roles.

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Now is one of those rare points in time in our industry when a revolutionary change is taking place in new technology. Virtualization is what is driving that change today, says Dave Wagner, solutions management director for Capacity Management and Provisioning at BMC Software. You see, "a perfect storm" is brewing: business units have to do more with less, CFOs question why their IT departments are spending money on hardware they aren't using to capacity, and IT is pushing to buy even more hardware to support business growth.  Operating more efficiently is the only way to prevent a disaster from happening ... and virtualization is the critical component you need to do this.

BMC takes a lifecycle management approach, Dave says. First, you have to understand where you are now; know where you'd like to be, and what steps you need to take to get there; and then optimize the steps to get you there successfully. Apply the discipline of capacity management to virtualization, he warns, because the business risk of not doing capacity planning for an enterprise is failure. No matter what the technology change, you've got to plan and you've got to be efficient. And if you don't execute these two actions, you're sure to pay for it later. The benefits? Simple: accelerate business agility, assure your ability to deliver against your service level agreements (SLAs), and mitigate risk. It's a no-brainer.

Resources

BMC® Performance Assurance® Suite for Virtual Servers

Marimba® Configuration Discovery from BMC Software

BMC® Performance Manager for Virtual Servers

Virtual Strategy Magazine: Part 2 - BMC's Virtualization Solutions with Dave Wagner

Bio

Dave Wagner is a solutions management director for Capacity Management and Provisioning at BMC Software. He is responsible for driving overall solution strategy, pricing, requirements, and positioning for BMC's families of proactive performance analysis, modeling and dynamic provisioning and orchestration solutions across leading enterprise platforms and their associated application environments. He has spoken at numerous conferences including the Computer Measurement Group, the premier conference for resource management and performance evaluation professionals.

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What does John Bostick, president and CEO of dbaDirect, data infrastructure management (Data IM) services, have to teach you about outsourcing the data management piece of your business?

First of all, says Bostick, what dbaDirect provides -- data infrastructure management (Date IM) services -- is not about outsourcing. "Do you look at hiring a babysitter for your kids as "outsourcing"? Do you look at bringing in a cleaning service for your company as "outsourcing"?" asks Bostick. "No -- these individuals and companies are business service providers. And that is what we are, at dbaDirect: a business service provider." Is the difference between using a business service and outsourcing mostly just semantics? Bostick argues that it is actually very real, -- a subtle, but critical, distinction that can make a lot of difference for your business.

Too often, when people think of the concept of outsourcing, they are thinking of a quick way to have part of their business done by someone else, for a cheaper price. But utilizing a business service is far more strategic, and requires that the company know the areas in which they are strongest, the areas in which they need help, and how to integrate a business service provider to bridge that gap and further strengthen the company. And the communication does not end after negotiating a deal with a business service provider, emphasizes Bostick. It has to be ongoing, proactive, and ultimately, all about the customer's business.

What does John Bostick have to teach you about outsourcing, and the strategy behind Data IM services? Tune in to this fast paced and informative interview, and find out!

Resources

Stop the Presses: Managing Data Infrastructure Comes into Its Own

dbaDirect

Bio

John Bostick is president and CEO of dbaDIRECT, a cutting-edge data infrastructure management (Data IM) services company. Before joining dbaDIRECT, Bostick served as general manager for Pomeroy Computer Resources.  There, he provided strategic direction by focusing the company's services toward Fortune 1000 organizations and medium-sized companies. Mr. Bostick left Pomeroy upon the successful completion of its initial public offering to start LÛCRUM.