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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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"We have to be very careful about confusing measuring things with trying to immediately improve them," says Colin Fletcher.

A universal law of business states, “What gets measured gets the attention.”  IT must ensure that the right metrics are used as key performance indicators (KPIs) so that appropriate actions are taken by IT management and IT staff to meet the targets set by these KPIs.

How long have you been measuring the same thing and getting the same results? Does what you're measuring result in positive change in the business? Have you evaluated what you're measuring against what your customers want? How well are you meeting your improvement goals? Have you taken time to dream about what your business would be like if you could do anything?

Join us as we talk with Colin Fletcher, Solutions Marketing Manager, BMC Atrium at BMC Software, about Developing Metrics that Matter. Colin shares insights and tips about how to develop metrics that matter in your IT environment.

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. Everyone wants IT to be a dependable, high-quality service to business users at a reasonable cost. But all too often it's not that way. IT groups are often overwhelmed with all the things they have to do. So at what point do you start? Are key performance indicators (KPIs) a way making this whole measurement thing a win for the IT group?
   
2. Do you think these days it's useful for IT groups to start from scratch on that perspective as a refresh?
3. You have said that developing KPIs is similar to working inside out. Can you expand on that
4. What is the difference between the perception of what is keeping people from achieving their goals, and the reality?
5. Is there potentially greater value in taking a broader, deeper look at what you're basing your KPI on, beyond the six-sigma approach, and beyond how accurate and how fast you've done things?
6. What is the value in establishing KPIs incrementally? Can you talk a little about what that would look like in an organization?
7. How do IT service management solutions fit into this picture?

Resources

BMC Industry Insight: Developing Metrics That Matter (PDF)

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"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?
   

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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)

Download Audio (13:49)

"The conversation needs to shift to how you actually extend and elongate the mean time between failures," says Ajay Singh.

What does it really mean to modernize your IT operation? How does a modernization effort relate to the rest of your business? Does virtualization alone mean you've modernized your operation? Join us as we talk with Ajay Singh, Vice President and General Manager of Service Assurance at BMC Software and find out how IT modernization can change your business for the better.

Bio

Ajay Singh  is Vice President and General Manager of Service Assurance, BMC Software. Ajay Singh is responsible for BMC’s Service Assurance products. He came to BMC as part of the ProactiveNet acquisition, where he was the founder, president, and CEO. Singh has more than 25 years of experience in application and system management, professional services, and marketing.

Questions

1. Today's multi-tiered IT environment presents both benefits and challenges. Is being multi-tiered enough in terms of modernization?
2. You say threshold events are meaningless, what do you mean by that?
3. It's common knowledge that performance and availability issues are reported by the end user so much of the time. Talk about what plays into this and how this scenario might be avoided?
4. Why is automation even more important these days?
5. How do we get beyond just addressing the routine tasks?
6. Do you have some examples of companies who have been successful at modernizing IT from this perspective-what were some of the changes they made to make that happen?
7. Does a company have to know and implement ITIL before they implement a Service Assurance program like this?
8. How does this all relate to the higher concept of Business Service Management or BSM?

Resources

Modernizing IT: Strategies for Improving Service Quality and Reducing IT Costs (pdf)

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

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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.

"If experts are no longer available, IT staff will likely err on the side of doing maintenance more often than necessary," says Bill Miller

Play Podcast   (Right click to download)

(9:29 minutes)

These days many IT executives have been living and breathing the budget crisis and its downstream impacts—including cutting IT budgets to the bone. The paradox is that they are still being asked to meet or exceed performance and service level agreements. Most are tired of the impact on their teams and the IT infrastructure that is so vital to the business. Join us as Bill Miller shares some straight talk about how to survive and even get good night’s sleep.

Bio

Bill Miller is  President of the Mainframe Service Management Unit at BMC Software. Bill joined BMC in 2002 from BindView Development Corporation, where he served as senior vice president and chief operating officer. Before joining BindView, he spent 21 years at IBM Corporation in various roles.

Questions

1. With the current IT paradox in full swing how can IT continue to meet business demands?
2. Can you elaborate on the idea of intelligent software? What do you mean by that? How is it going to help IT weather the economic storm?
3. Is the mainframe still relevant today?
4. That’s very interesting and valuable information, Bill.  Would you share some examples of how mainframe organizations have benefited from implementing intelligent software?
5. If someone is looking for intelligent software solutions that can help them lower costs and be prepared for better times in the future, where can they find that information?

Resources

Getting the Work Done During Tough Times (PDF)

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

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(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?