BMC CTO talks IT management

BMC Software CTOTom Bishop, formerly CTO of Tivoli Software, came on board at BMC earlier this year, bringing his 20 years of IT management experience to help BMC evolve from a point-product vendor to an IT service management provider. Recently, Bishop spoke with Network World Senior Editor Denise Dubie about his plans and directions for the company.

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BMC Software CTOTom Bishop, formerly CTO of Tivoli Software, came on board at BMC earlier this year, bringing his 20 years of IT management experience to help BMC evolve from a point-product vendor to an IT service management provider. Recently, Bishop spoke with Network World Senior Editor Denise Dubie about his plans and directions for the company.

Tell me about your responsibilities at BMC.

One of the primary responsibilities I have is helping drive a key part of BMC's Business Service Management strategy, the whole integration platform called Atrium. I am currently involved in the design and the implementation of that technology within the R&D organization.

Could you elaborate a bit on the Atrium platform?

BMC has been known as a very good point-product company - having good products in a lot of different areas but not having made a significant investment in integration technology in the past. Certainly not, for example, in the way that people historically viewed Tivoli. What we have been doing now for a couple of years is integrate a number of products together around what we call pillars. There are five pillars [in] Atrium. There is a presentation component, which consists of the dashboard and reporting pillars. There is a CMDB [configuration management database] component, which is specified by ITIL [Information Technology Infrastructure Library]. We've got a service model, which is also being added as part of the CDMB, and finally we are embracing Web services as a core component of the Atrium architecture. All these form the backbone of the integration strategy that makes BSM real.

Have management vendors seen a demand from customers for better integration?

There's a pretty clear market shift within organizations that we talk to, and this has been true for some time now, that IT organizations have to become more business-focused. In order to deliver on that business focus or to make it easier for IT organizations to work in a business context, information that has traditionally been kept in disparate places and managed in very disjointed and discrete ways now has to be integrated in some way. Probably the most common way - and the approach being embraced by BMC - is around a core set of IT service-management best practices.

Do you think management vendors should take on the onus of integration for customers?

I absolutely do. I spend a fair amount of my time - about half - communicating externally for the company, and a lot of that time is spent talking with customers. One of the single most important requirements we hear over and over again is that customers would prefer management vendors do a much better job of integrating their products than they have done in the past. It will make it easier for the customer to use the products and get value more quickly without a lot of time and effort doing integration.

Aside from technology, how does BMC help customers get their BSM strategies in order?

An important thing for us is to capture the best practices but offer the solution in such a way that customers have multiple on-ramps. Rather than saying, "here is a fully integrated IT service management solution that embraces process and best practices, buy the whole thing," we are offering a more incremental approach. There isn't [just] one way to get into a more service-oriented IT management approach. BMC, in particular, has eight "routes to value." It's our way of saying, "here's where you want to get to, but you all aren't starting in the same place." The next step for one customer could be tacking [on] asset management, but for another it could be incident management. What we tried to do is basically have it both ways: We deliver an integrated solution that has a clear road map associated with the steps or progression [that] we recommend organizations take, but [we try] not to be too prescriptive with that. We have a flexible solution that allows you to start in several different places and then take the next steps as those steps are appropriate to your particular need and your environment - but with confidence that they all integrate.