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Wednesday, October 12, 2016

BMC Engage 2016 – guiding Enterprises in digital transformation

By Rich Ptak

BMC’s annual Engage event held at the Aria Resort and Casino in Las Vegas attracted over 2500 customers, executives, staff and analysts. In 300+ technical sessions, 90+ customer presentations and multiple keynotes, BMC, clients and 170+ ecosystem partners discussed and demonstrated solutions targeting enterprise digital transformation. Here’s what we took away from the event. 

Multiple speakers detailed the emerging challenges facing enterprises, as well as society, as they undertake the transformation and transition to digitized operations. Multiple commentators label this “The Fourth Industrial Revolution.” We (and others) think this shortchanges the depth and extent of the changes taking place. We believe it merely hints at the extent of the impact. 

Setting the scene

BMC Chairman and CEO, Bob Beauchamp began the conference with a concise summary of the growth and performance of their digital business. Privately owned, BMC doesn’t reveal specific numbers. However, trends in a number of performance metrics point to strong customer acceptance. For FY16 (April ’15 to March ’16), these include: 

·         900 net-new customers
·         30% year-over-year growth in new bookings with each quarter exceeding the previous one
·         24% sales pipeline growth
·         Selection by Forbes as one of America’s Best Employers  

All of this provides convincing evidence that privatization has been good for BMC customers, partners and employees. Let’s see what’s behind all this. 

First is the extraordinarily rapidity of results in app-driven, digitized markets. One example is the disruptive speed of new business models, seen in banking having their “Uber moment” and confronting Uber itself as autonomous vehicles enter the market. Second is the extraordinarily rapid revenue impact of a successful product. It took only 10 days after the introduction of Pokémon GO for Nintendo’s market cap to leap from $21B to $42B. A phenomenal increase for any product, let alone a video game. In addition to market impact, transformation is driven by an extraordinary number of technologies entering the market. We’ll talk about them in the next section. 

These few examples of digitization-driven impact dramatically illustrate why BMC believes their customers must “Go Digital! Or DIE!”  Okay, BMC states it a little less dramatically as, “Go Digital or Go Extinct!” – either way, disruptive, existential threats that require action do exist. Enterprises, of all sizes, are realizing they need help to define, plan and execute to move forward. 

The technology drivers

Executives acknowledge that undertaking the journey to become a digital enterprise is inevitable. Successfully navigating the way to digital requires significant new ways of thinking, as well as quick adoption and use of disruptive technologies. These include ones recognized and in use today (e.g. mobile Internet, cloud technology, Internet of Things, virtual reality, Big Data and analytics). Along with rapid advancements in base technologies, such as artificial intelligence, natural language exploitation in combination with newly commercially viable solutions in such areas as advanced robotics, bots, Blockchain, autonomous vehicles, etc. The sheer volume creates an unprecedented number of disruptive changes occurring at remarkable speed across every market segment.  

BMC Digital Enterprise Management (DEM) for the transformation

With last year’s introduction of its DEM initiatives, BMC positioned itself as a capable, willing partner to help enterprises undertake the transformation. Robin Purohit, BMC’s Group President of Enterprise Solutions Organization stated it this way: “Our mission is to equip our worldwide customers with innovations and solutions they need to start the digital transformation journey, stay on course, and be successful in digital business.”   

A large ambition. One that will be welcome news to numerous C-level executives and IT staff who realize: “The digital imperative is clear: go digital or go extinct.” We’ve heard repeatedly from these teams that they are looking for a partner to help them advance down a path to digitization. The question is: “Can BMC deliver what they need?”  

BMC’s overview tends to indicate they can. As seen in the initiatives designed to aid customers in seven strategic areas. Three are integrated solutions targeting the following:
1.    Digital Workplace – BMW provides a faster, better dealer support experience
2.    Secure Operations (SecOps) – Aegon/Transamerica benefits with better security
3.    Service Management Excellence – Wegmans improves services with data analytics 

Then, customers documented successes achieved with innovative BMC solutions for:
4.    Agile Application Delivery – Target described their experience in speeding app improvements and development
5.    Big data – Malwarebytes detailed improving customer services with faster analysis of greater volumes and kinds of customer data
6.    IT Optimization – Swiss Re talked about optimizing IT operations
7.    Multi-Sourced cloud operations – a Ministry of Defense representative described how they simplified operations involving multiple, different cloud environments 

BMC DEM Solutions and Products for customer success

Customers ranging from the largest Fortune 100 to mid-size and entrepreneurs provided further evidence of how BMC services and products help fuel successful transformations. After sampling the over 80 customer and partner presentations and demos available, we’ve come to the conclusion that BMC definitely delivers results.

They do so with operational integration efforts involving their own products and applications to facilitate communications and cooperation between developers and LOB staff. The overall goal is to enable “service management excellence.” One example integrates BMC BladeLogic and BMC Remedy for simplified and improved automated change management. Integration details are provided on the
BMC website[1] along with customer stories. As we’ve mentioned before, customer results will vary. However, it is always worth investigating the successes (as well as the mistakes) of others.  

Proven in BMC’s own transformation

According to McKinsey & Company research[2], “less than a quarter of organizational-redesign efforts succeed. Forty-four percent run out of steam after getting under way, while a third fail to meet objectives or improve performance after implementation.” That’s one reason we were excited when BMC presented results of the five-step process they followed in their own internal Digital Transformation:

1.    Organizing for Digital – organizational and operational changes support digital transformation.

2.    Delivering with speed and agility – increase work environment use of technology and automation (Data Center consolidation, Global Command Center, Unified Communications) for cost savings.

3.    Optimizing workloads – give people meaningful work, automate the rest.

4.    Communication value through Technology Business Management (TBM) – measure and report Digital Service Management (DSM) progress in easily understood terms.

5.    Managing software assets and risks – optimize costs through (pro-)active management. 

As result, BMC went from 62,000 sq. ft. for 36 Data Center/Labs using 1.6 MW power with a $6.8M operating expense to 7,500 sq. ft. for 4 Data Centers using 640 KW power with operating expenses of $2.4M. BMC is sharing both the expertise in applying products and experience in implementation services to help their customers determine what they can achieve.  

One Last Thing

Engage 2016 included much more of interest, including announcement of an Innovation Suite to address escalating app development interest by management and business analyst types. Due in November, it uses an array of the latest development tools (slack, JIRA, Bamboo, docker, GitHub, Jenkins, CHEF, etc.) linked to existing BMC products to allow what is essentially ‘drag ‘n drop’ app creation. Intriguing when you consider the potential to accelerate the move from conception to product delivery! And, we haven’t even touched on the announcements around mainframe products and solutions. We’ll cover all that in a separate piece with more added in future pieces.  

BMC as a private company is proving its ability to act aggressively and effectively to address the most pressing challenges facing its clients, including Digital Transformation. BMC distinguishes itself with its comprehensive, understandable vision of a digital future. They developed and offered DEM as a blueprint for implementation. Uniquely, BMC also raised the issue of the wider societal implications of Digital Transformation and how these will impact the future of the Enterprise and IT in the Enterprise. We will be writing more about that topic in the future.



[2] Steven Aronowitz, Aaron De Smet, Deirdre McGinty, “Getting organizational redesign right,” McKinsey Quarterly, n.d. (accessed October 10, 2016) - https://tinyurl.com/j7za63s