Join leaders from Dell, Cisco, and NetApp alongside BMC CEO Bob Beauchamp and our team of mobile ITSM experts for a full day of interactive demos, talks, and training. Hear from customers who are extending BSM to BlackBerrys, iPhones, bar code scanners, and cell phones. Learn why companies like Lennox International (NYSE: LII) and government agencies like the National Institutes of Health report 30-50% productivity gains and tighter alignment with business goals when executives, managers, and technicians proactively manage IT in real-time from anywhere.

We're excited to participate in this BMC-first, innovative, online-only event format and think you'll see why on October 29. Register here then ask for me at the booth and we'll send you an Aeroprise gift.

See you next week!

By Dan Turchin, chief executive officer and co-founder of Aeroprise. Follow Dan on Twitter.

The postings in this blog are my own and don't necessarily represent BMC's opinion or position.

-by Dan Turchin, chief executive officer and co-founder of Aeroprise. Follow Dan on Twitter.

Never Go Thirsty Again

I heard this story from a public utilities customer last week: a key node on their SAN that stores customer data for use by the billing system was approaching capacity. Through a nifty BMC Capacity Management-Change Management integration, it spawned a change request that was routed to a change manager with budget authority to approve the $10,000 worth of additional storage required. That's where the process broke down.

The approval never made it to the assigned delegate and instead sat in a queue while the manager vacationed in Rome. While he was en route to Tuscany, the SAN reached capacity and the approval request grew moss. While he sipped Chianti, the financial system went down. While he pontooned, 11,000 customers had their water shut off because late payments weren't processed. While he boarded to return, the CIO asked for heads on platters before being told their new mobile change approval system would prevent this from ever happening again.

Rewind the clock. What should have happened? Mobile change approvals are powerfully simple. With a click or two from anywhere in the world on a BlackBerry or mobile phone, basic requests receive basic replies in real-time: approved or rejected. Approvers have wireless access to full request history including details about underlying assets and their business impact. In the future, our utility friends will have mobile workflow that spawns mobile approvals that escalate until a response is received when an urgent reply is required. Delegates can't shirk responsibility, priority events are appropriately identified, and critical systems never fail for lack of timely response.

Sad but true: this customer said they routinely have requests that sit untouched for weeks. With mobile approvals, they should sit no more than an hour. Currently, 85% of downtime is caused by unplanned changes or failure to react quickly to planned ones. That should go down at least an order of magnitude within weeks. All of this will be accomplished with no new investment in infrastructure and only minimal retraining. And most important, it will turn wasted time - waiting in line, commuting, etc. - into productive time for their busiest people.

This is not a technology project. It's a business project facilitated by mobile technology. The kind of project that was foreign two years ago, is a hot topic today, and will be standard practice in the years ahead.

Click here for more information about Mobile Change Management from Aeroprise.

The postings in this blog are my own and don't necessarily represent BMC's opinion or position.

-by Dan Turchin, chief executive officer and co-founder of Aeroprise

Dear CIO:

I'm here to divulge your secret. That one you keep guarded from vendors then brag about over beers at bonding events. We're on to you. But I want you to know there's nothing to be ashamed of and you're not alone. Every one of the 500,000 gear heads lining up for a 3G S this weekend knows exactly how you feel.

You don't purchase mobile software based on Return On Anything - investment, capital, or otherwise. At the moment of truth, you buy because you need to, because you don't want to be left behind, because your peers would mock you for being a laggard if you didn't.

You purchase mobile applications because it's a new world and even though you're not exactly sure you believe those payback models or all the MBA speak you know mobile applications are here to stay. And while you can't predict where the S&P 500 will be next year you know your users will be more mobile in 12 months than today. And you know mobile devices keep getting better, networks keep getting more reliable, service costs keeps falling, and battery life keeps improving. But most important, you know you're roadkill if you think you can survive without staying connected.

One of your brethren told me last week (in confidence, no names to protect the sheepish) that he'll never look at the Aeroprise ROI model his analyst built. But it'll be there for posterity, confirm he did due diligence, and ensure his decision sidesteps CFO scrutiny. Why did he buy? There are a dozen reasons and while all of them relate to saving money and providing strategic support to the business not one involves numbers on a spreadsheet.

The problem isn't that ROI is obsolete. In fact, it’s more relevant than ever. It's just necessary but not sufficient - like the rental car rider on your auto insurance policy or the cardboard sleeve for your latte. ROI is particularly useless as a guide for mobile projects because so little is known up front about where actual cost savings will occur. Oh, they're there - but the most successful projects are ones that ooze into new business units and creep across department lines to generate returns never anticipated.

So don't let me burst your bubble oh deity of data, sultan of servers. Feel free to pretend we don't know. Keep ridiculing our gullibility. But then do more of same - believe in the power of mobile solutions to transform your business. Think beyond the spreadsheet and create your own ROI reality unfettered by macros and pivot tables. Then, if you're so bold, share your story. You'd be amazed at how many closet ROI heretics will benefit from it.

-dan

The postings in this blog are my own and don't necessarily represent BMC's opinion or position.

The mobile software industry has failed us all. If you've been reading this blog, you know how strongly I feel about the importance of improving the mobile user experience. That's why we started Aeroprise nine years ago. Using mobile applications should be more like driving a Prius or using an iPod - things we're good at because we love doing them - and less like shaving - something we hate but get good at because the alternatives draw blood. When designing software for handhelds, the end-user experience is all that matters and yet as an industry we've consistently ignored it.

Need proof? There are more than 4.1 billion mobile subscribers. And 6.7 billion people. Phones are quickly eclipsing PCs as the primary computing device. Mobile data usage is soaring while PC shipments plummet. 70% of corporate employees spend more than 50% of their time away from a PC (source: IDC). And yet... a sliver of a percent of all spending on enterprise applications will be for mobile solutions this year.

Talk to any CxO to confirm it's not for lack of demand and it certainly isn’t the weak economy (in fact, the reverse is true). They'll tell you that within 18 months, any application that's not available on mobile devices will be obsolete. So where's the rub? Talk to any subset of five mobile enterprise app users and you'll see it first-hand.

Too few love them and too many are merely proud to know how they work. That must change. If the same principle applied to driving we'd be Emerson Fitipaldi at Speedway by commuting to work accident-free. To meet expectations, mobile business applications can't be about wireless technology and the experience can't be about who can figure them out. They must be about business benefits like improved productivity and real-time collaboration.

Vic Gundotra, Vice President of Engineering for Google's mobile and developer products, points out in an interesting guest post on TechCrunch: "...for the first time ever, half of all new connections to the internet will come from a phone in 2009." The post focuses on mobile data from a Google perspective but the themes are universal: "users appreciate well-written software, but ease of use and on-device navigability are critical preconditions for usage." Case in point (from the same post): Google Earth had more activations the day it launched on the iPhone than on any other day in its history because the iPhone App Store makes it easy to find and try it. It’s no secret what’s missing and yet we can’t expect different results until we change our approach.

Touch screens aren’t keyboards, wireless networks aren’t always available, and mobile devices aren’t PCs. But when their real value is unlocked, they do things like geo-locate and make voice calls that make them better than any PC ever will be. I'm biased but I think our approach to end-user personalization, presence-awareness, and automatic device optimization are leading the industry in the right direction. Even so, I’m the first to admit we have a lot of work to do. More on what lies ahead in future posts but rest assured, those nicks and cuts will heal soon.