Which Came First: BSM or the BSM Vendor?

First, let’s be clear about one thing – Business Service Management is neither fast nor easy. BMC introduced BSM to the market in 2003, and over the last 5 years we’ve improved both the way we define BSM and how we go about providing it. But we’re the first to acknowledge that BSM is a journey, not a destination.  We’re also the first to acknowledge that there are multiple routes one can take to complete this journey.

It is important to note that the core components of BSM vary drastically depending on which vendor you ask. At BMC, we focus our BSM strategy around three primary disciplines – Service Support, Service Assurance and Service Automation – all of which integrate with a CMDB. This means a bunch of their data is federated into the CMDB, and they each leverage federated data accessed through the CMDB.

InformationWeek editor Michael Biddick recently published an article dissecting the BSM market. In the article, the author contrasts the approach of  two “niche vendors,”– Compuware Vantage and Managed Objects – with that of the traditional larger IT service management companies, a la CA, HP and IBM.

The article echoes what we hear consistently from customers – BSM is an impossibility without first having solid processes in place. That’s why we’ve invested heavily to ensure our products align with ITIL best practices. In fact, if there were such a thing as “ITIL out of the box,” we think we have it.  At BMC, we firmly believe that successful IT initiatives balance people, process, and technology. As the adage goes, “there is more than one way to skin a cat.”  And there are any number of IT shortcuts capable of temporarily resolving service issues and outages.  But an IT management architecture built on well-defined processes will always result in a more agile, resilient, and secure IT environment.  And it’s certainly is a prerequisite to one of the critical volumes in ITIL v3 – Continual Service Improvement.

The article also makes an incorrect generalization by suggesting that smaller vendors do a better job of “playing well with others.” BMC – a charter member of the ‘Big Four’ management vendors – provides solutions that operate well in heterogeneous environments and integrate with the broadest range of technologies possible.  This allows organizations to utilize current IT investments instead of replacing and beginning anew.  As we tell our customers every day, a correct implementation of BMC’s BSM strategy makes our competitor products better.  This is a fundamental difference between BMC and our competitors.

Skeptics will always say that there is no such thing as a ‘one-stop IT shop’ that can solve all your problems. That may very well be true.  But reality is that more and more organizations are looking to consolidate vendors and want integrated suites of solutions that do more and require less in terms of resource allocation, time-to-value, etc.  Our experience, and certainly our customers, tell us BMC delivers exactly that.