Downtime and Indian enterprises, now a history

How has the period of a dismal economy been for BMC given its forte in risks management and cost optimization when it comes to IT Solutions?

 

The economic climate created opportunity for strong IT vendors like BMC. When there’s a downturn, you absolutely need to cut costs, but you certainly don’t stop everything. You take a look around, make determinations about what’s important, and make the smartest investments you can. BSM is saving organizations millions of dollars by proactively managing the IT infrastructure and preventing issues. This is BMC’s sweet spot and it’s why we’re emerging from the downturn in very good shape.

Could you share some more details the recent announcement on Mobily and how Mobily could use your solutions as a driver and what milestones are outlined now?

Mobily operates in an extensive and complex IT system, encompassing a number of Windows and UNIX servers, a quarter of which are virtualized. IT services, however, were not aligned to the company’s ambitious business objectives to solidify their position as Saudi Arabia’s leading mobile operator. Mobily then looked into adopting BMC’s Business Service Management (BSM) solutions to automate a manually-managed and paper-based IT service environment that suffered from inefficient problem management, slow launch services and excessive service assurance and support costs.

BMC provided Service Support solutions which helped Mobily to reduce IT complexity and revolutionizing customer support, change management and asset management in the process.  It also provided Service Assurance solutions which have helped to transform analytics, event automation and performance management, rapidly finding and fixing problems.

Any metrics worth a mention?

BMC’s solutions have delivered a 60 per cent reduction in problem ticket resolution time, a 40 per cent decrease in the mean time to repair faults and a 20 per cent cut in service support and service assurance costs.

How is the Indian enterprise market shaping up?

The Indian enterprise market reflects the global trend where there are four major vendors competing: IBM, HP, BMC and CA. The potential for growth is significant – 100 per cent as the domestic market matures and continues to build out their infrastructure, the Global Outsourcers and SI’s continue to build their leveraged environments with BMC technology and as the Government continues to invest in IT technology to service their 1.1 Billion citizens.  

We are seeing significant investment in automation, not to necessarily reduce staff, but to reassign them to more valuable, meaningful and profitable projects. The acceptance of downtime is quickly becoming a thing of the past. The systems and services need to be ‘up’ and ‘available’.

So domestic market is high-key one for BMC?

We will continue to invest in the Domestic market in India as we expect double digit growth for several years to come.

Some of our key clientele in India include giants such as Infosys, Wipro, HCL, Cognizant, Capgemini, iLantus, Bharti, Idea, Vodafone, Tata Motors, Mahindra & Mahindra, Tata Communications and many more. Also we have recently bagged our first government deal with an insurance organisation for providing IT Service Management solutions to automate their help desks. It is a multimillion dollar deal.

What's your strategy and proposition with proactive IT flavour of BSM solutions?

The increased complexity of IT infrastructure, coupled with the rising pressure on IT to stay ahead of business service demands, make proactive IT and predictive intelligence an imperative, not only for IT, but for the business as a whole. This is a natural fit for us, and we are applying next-generation technology along with best practices – gleaned from years of experience. We recently launched a range of products delivering BSM for Proactive IT Operations, such as BMC Event & Impact Management and BladeLogic Server Automation, Network Automation and Client Automation.

What’s your take on BSM's evolving role in the pecking order of a CIO's IT strategy and outlook?

More than ever, CIOs have to do more with existing assets and make new IT investments as effective as possible right out of the gate – basically, they must ensure ROI and add value to the business, not just exist as a cost center. Managing the IT environment properly is an essential step in doing that, because without proper management and visibility, you may find yourself flying blind. Many of the customers and, more specifically, CIOs I talk to recognize this. So I think you’ll see BMC’s role become ever more important as CIOs plan for not just today or next month, but as they map out their IT setup for the next several years.

Any outlook for the year ahead?

We’re excited for 2010 and what’s in store for BMC, our customers and the industry as a whole. That’s not to say that as we start to see a light at the end of the tunnel in terms of the recession, CIO’s won’t still face challenges. IT department heads have to plan for a year that requires maintaining service levels set in 2009 following drastic budget cuts, while preparing for a recovery that could put increased pressure on these environments. How they manage the recession will be a key factor in how they come out of it.