-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.