How are your sys admins handling the ever increasing demands from the regulatory and compliance front? Are you still primarily working in reactive mode? What does it mean to think from the Blade Logic perspective?

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Are you getting the most out of your applications? Do you know how BMC Analytics and Dashboards can help you? Have you plugged into the BMC Communities? Join us as we talk with Matthieu Laurenceau, Lead Technical Marketing Consultant at BMC Software Research and Development, about Dashboards, Analytics, and what's new on the BMC Communities.

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These days many IT executives have been living and breathing the budget crisis and its downstream impacts -- including cutting IT budgets to the bone. The paradox is that they are still being asked to meet or exceed performance and service level agreements. Most are tired of the impact on their teams and the IT infrastructure that is so vital to the business. Join us as Bill Miller shares some straight talk about how to survive and even get good night?s sleep.

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Can downsizing and consolidating data centers yield long-term savings sufficient enough to warrant the project? There is nodoubt. By right-sizing, you can often recoup the project costs in months, not years. Join us in a conversation with Vick Vaishnavi, vice president of Worldwide Marketing for BMC Software, as we discuss practical tips  to help you build the business case for and implement a data center consolidation.

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Is your company changing the way it does service management? Have you thought about how your finance department fits into your ITIL initiative? Is your finance department sitting on the steering committee? Are they asking if there is something they need to do differently?

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Are you skeptical about whether you can actually use out-of-the-box technology to achieve the most value from an IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL ® )perspective?  Have you ever selected technology that aligned with your goals but were surprised at what you found in the box? Are some of your staff ITIL trained or ITIL certified, but they still don't understand their roles in the ITIL process? Are you still trying to define your processes so you can start an ITIL initiative? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are not alone. Industry experts have raised these same questions about getting an ITIL solution using out-of-the-box technology. Join us as we talk with an ITIL expert, Anthony Orr, and explore this question, Can you Really Get ITIL Out of the Box?

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Batch processing is not just for the mainframe any more. It's also a valuable on Linux, Unix, and Windows environments and many other midrange systems. Regardless of your platform, if you're looking for a reduction in downtime, faster problem tracking and resolution of exceptions, or if you're looking to your business without adding staff in the IT operations area, IT workload automation may take your business to the next level. Listen in as we talk with John McKenny, BMC vice president of Worldwide Marketing for Mainframe Service Management (MSM) and find out how IT workload automation can help you improve the efficiency of your overall operations and help your business deliver new applications more quickly.

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Are you looking for operational savings? Are you looking for a way to get a handle on what you actually have in service desks and the level of service to your business? Are you getting the most out of your monitoring and management tools? Are you looking to save costs or help make your data center more effective and efficient? Are your vendors simplifying or complicating your life? For answers to these questions and more, listen in as we talk with Glenn O'Donnell and Jim Grant about three IT strategies to help you cut costs intelligently.

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"We in IT are in the business of change, but we don't like change ourselves. The world is changing and we need to be ready," says Glenn O'Donnell. -- Are your vendors simplifying or complicating your life? Are your software license contracts under control? Do you know what your vendor deliverables are and how they are performing? If you need to get a better handle on what's going on with the myriad vendors you are working with, listen in as we talk with Glenn O'Donnell and Jim Grant about saving costs with vendor consolidation.

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"Customers see the benefit both in terms of operational savings to IT and dramatically improved service to their customers," says Jim Grant. -- Are you looking for a way to get a handle on what you actually have in service desks and the level of service to your business? Are you looking for operational savings? Would you like to improve your first-call resolution rates or improve service to your customers? How can Service Desk Consolidation help you with that? For answers to these questions and more, listen in as we talk with Glenn O'Donnell (left) and Jim Grant (right) about saving costs with service desk consolidation.

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"Automation is not just application of technology. It's application of technology to proven processes," says Glenn O'Donnell. -- Data center consolidation can help reduce costs and make the organization more nimble in responding to customer needs. Are you getting the most out of your monitoring and management tools? Are you looking to save costs or help make your data center more effective and efficient? Then listen in as we talk with Glenn O'Donnell and Jim Grant about saving costs with data center consolidation.

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Cloud computing is becoming more common, and a host of new technology is emerging out of public cloud providers. If you're thinking about cloud computing you may be asking yourself these quesitons: What cloud computing model is right for your organization? What role does virtualization play in the cloud? How do BMC's management solutions fit in with cloud computing? Join us as we talk with Herb VanHook for a lively discussion about cloud computing.

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Capacity Management has long been viewed as a discipline for the mainframe to help control hardware costs. In today's environment?with a proliferation of servers and with distributed and virtual environments becoming more and more common?capacity management is even more relevant for all data centers and IT operations. We all want to optimize our existing IT investments and reduce operational costs, while maintaining performance and service-levels. While capacity management can certainly help organizations achieve these sometimes opposing goals, we can increase the likelihood of success by adopting a proven process. Whether you have a formalized capacity management process in place?and the tools to get it done?or you simply recognize the need to get started with Capacity Management, the best-practices discussed in this podcast will help you to optimize the delivery of Capacity Management in your organization.

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Is cloud computing going to take over the data center as we know it? Are you thinking about the cloud as a means to achieve greater flexibility, with lower complexity and less hands-on time with configuration management? Will writing scalable applications be a thing of the past? If that's your current train of thought maybe it's time for some down-to-earth thinking. Join us as we talk about cloud computing with William Hurley (whurley) chief architect of open source strategy at BMC Software. Listen in as whurley discusses some of the benefits of cloud computing as well as cracks open a few myths, discusses how cloud computing currently fits into the data-center picture, and talks about some of the newer open source players in the cloud.

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Are you trying to solve problems by thinking within the framework in which they were created? Has your ITIL implementation gotten off track? Are you looking for new inspiration to move forward with ITIL in these tough economic times? Do you understand the true strength of ITIL? Join us as we talk with Erin Casteel, Solutions Architect with BMC Software. Draw on Erin's wealth of experience as an ITIL consultant for tips on leading change in the organization. Learn when a sense of urgency is useful, how you can avoid reinventing the wheel, what it really means to sell ITIL in the organization, and why it pays to find opportunities in crises.

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Are you getting the most value out of your environment for the least possible cost? Are you getting the most bang for your capacity? Is there unrecognized risk in your environment? Do you wonder what the Service Optimization maturity model applies to your operation? Listen in on our conversation with Mike Moser, Product Management Director at BMC Software, as we discuss Mainframes and Service Optimization. Find out how Service Optimization is relevant in the mainframe environment, hear examples of how large companies have increased productivity and reduced costs, and learn how the Service Optimization maturity model can help you identify the highest impact opportunities.

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Do you want to lower service support costs significantly and still meet the growing demand for new and improved services? Is your IT department siloed and relying on point solutions? Does your IT department know how it really fits into your company's business goals? Join us as we talk with Doug Mueller,Chief Technology Officer in the Service Management Business Unit of BMC Software. Get insights into ways to incrementally move into taking a holistic approach to ITIL and service support. Hear examples of how a holistic approach benefited various types of businesses, increased accuracy, efficiency, and responsiveness. Find out how becoming company business aware can enhance IT's role in delivering the company's product.

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IT organizations are being driven to reduce costs, yet service-delivery expectations remain very high. We may be putting off CPU upgrades, but the business wants to deliver high levels of service. Listen in as Bill Arledge, Consulting Product Manager, at BMC Software talks about Service Optimization and data management. Find out about combining intelligent automation with best practices, managing your environment to drive down costs and achieve the goal of improving service. Get tips for determining how Service Optimization can benefit your environment, and steps for implementation.

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Even in 2009, the mainframe environment still contains the vast majority of the mission-critical applications for businesses. Mainframes are the lifeblood of our businesses. Storage on mainframes continues to grow each year due to current compliance requirements. More and more data has to be retained over longer periods of time, yet be accessible to business, auditors and government agencies. Today, due to the graying of the workforce, IT struggles with delivering higher service levels, reducing risk to business, and increasing productivity in the mainframe environment. Service Optimization can help. Service Optimization is a disciplined approach that combines intelligent automation with best practices, to take advantage of advanced technologies out there today to make the business more effective and efficient. Listen is as Mike Spencer, Storage and Optimization strategist in the Mainframe Service Management business unit of BMC Software, talks about Service Optimization for storage in the mainframe environment

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Have you thought about BSM, but haven't quite gotten the buy-in you need? Do you have an existing installation that isn't quite living up to your initial expectations? Get down and dirty with BSM installations and implementation. Listen in as Peter Armaly gives pointers that will help you get the greatest benefit from your BSM solution. Learn some pragmatic and specific tips that can help you make BSM even more business relevant. From planning, to company-wide communication and asking the right questions, this podcast is useful whether you're just considering implementation or you've been using your solution for awhile.

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Audio Podcast interview with Eli Almog, Corporate Architect in BMC's CTO Office. The IT environment in a large organization is full of complexity, replete with islands of information and architecture, and staff who work in relative isolation, but who may make decisions that have the potential to affect operations enterprise-wide. Have you, or someone on our staff ever installed a service on a server, and rebooted it, only to discover you brought down a critical application in the process? Have you ever looked at the myriad applications, hardware, and personnel under your direction and wondered how you can effectively manage all of them? How do you know when when it's time to start looking at third-party Business Service Management (BSM) tools? How would a CMDB fit in? In this Podcast with Eli Almog, Corporate Architect in BMC's CTO Office, discusses how IT managers can know when it's time to look at BSM, consider CMDB, learn how virtualization fits into your organization, and how automation can help your company retain its competitive edge.

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Over the last decade, IT infrastructures have become exceedingly complex, resulting in a highly interconnected network of new and powerful technologies. In a world where IT budgets are shrinking and mergers and acquisitions are more and more common, how do you get the most value from your existing IT resources yet maintain agility? In this Podcast, with Kia Behnia, Chief Corporate Architect at BMC, find out how service automation can help you navigate the"perfect storm" of new technologies such as server virtualization, as well as legacy distributed and mainframe computing environments that support millions of transactions through multi-tiered applications. Discover the pain points that can lead a company toward service automation, and how you can benefit from not only from thinking tactically about holes that automation can plug, but also by looking at areas the enterprise that can get the biggest bang for the buck both in the near term and long term. Behnia talks about looking beyond the individual elements that currently exist in the data center or IT environment, and looking at the many ways that automation can help prevent critical human error in the highly interconnected environment. Finally, he outlines ways companies can get service automation right, and leaves us with a summary of the three most critical benefits of service automation.

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While he's quick to say that he didn't choose the title of his white paper, "Between the Bazaar and the Cathedral - Where ITIL®, Business Service Management, and Open Source Converge" in this podcast, Whurley openly talks about the lessons learned and leadership of enterprise software meeting open source, and community involvement in producing quality software. Listen in on this half-hour conversation where he and Tom Parish talk about community as a self managing and self governing entity. As a case study, the 13,000 registered members on BMC Developer's Network at developer.bmc.com comprise that community and entity for BMC Software. As Whurley loves to state - software is software is software. He means that you have to decide if you have time or money for any software deployment. Learn if there are mystical calculations for whether open source is better for your situation. You'll enjoy listening in and even finding out what sets Whurley's office apart from other BMC offices. Visit http://talk.bmc.com

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Mary Nugent Vice President, Service Assurance, BMC Software In your IT department, what happens when your alarm levels go from 300 alarms an hour to 30? Would you trust your tools enough to know that the alarms it sends you are truly halting a business service? While Mary Nugent won't use this podcast to attempt to tell you technical details on the correct alarming thresholds, she will share some excellent stories. Discover how IT affects even moving the most precious deliveries safely, thanks to IT predictions and avoidance of failure. When does monitoring a printer actually stop trucks from leaving the premises? What surprises her about the future of predictive intelligence? What can non-futurists learn about predicting a system's behavior with enough data collection? Find out this and more in this informative interview with Mary Nugent, vice president, Service Assurance, BMC Software.

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When does an IT department stop playing shoot 'em up games with their toolset and start playing cooperatively with tools that work like snap-together blocks? Learn this and more in this podcast with Dennis Drogseth, Vice President of Enterprise Management Associates. His viewpoint and experiences lend themselves well to stories of how CMDB adoption is emerging across several different industries from financials to health care. He also works out some predictions for how a CMDB can age gracefully and grow modularily, talking about a constituency-driven CMDB model, where the staff, CFO, CEO, or CTO can be satisfied constituent groups supported by the Configuration Items (CIs) included in the model. Dennis reminds us that it's not just the technology, but the politics, commitment, communication, and executive buy-in all have a role in the success or failure of a CMDB or ITIL project. Dennis explains how the process planning for a CMDB can be political whether it's an ITIL process that you're adhering to, or some derivative of ITIL. Decide if your people and team are up for the task of enabling the IT team to help the business grow and meet its service levels, and learn more about the emergence of the CMDB in helping people get their job done.

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Mobility has two meanings, when you stop to think about it. There's the mobile technology we've all come to appreciate, but there's also the legs that you walk around on and the vehicles that workers use for business. Mobile devices such as cell phones are technology-based movement enablers, but what happens if you put a pedometer on an IT worker and measure their steps? How can IT work directly affect gas and energy expenditures? Find out in this interesting podcast with Dan Turchin, President of Aeroprise, and Tom Biship, CTO at BMC Software. Dan and Tom have thought about mobility and share stories from their mobile lifestyles. As you might imagine, there are distinct, measurable connections between IT worker mobility and a businesses' dependence on IT service desk and IT service availability around the clock. As the world flattens, making geography boundaries less meaningful, so does a clock's ticking become less and less the focus of an IT department's tasks. They also discuss how the end of the exclusively-PC computing environment is near as the mobile-centric environment marches in. With a mobile phone knowing your calendar, your availability, and perhaps even your location, more context is available with mobile devices than a desktop computer. Is your mobile office simply your pocket and a Blackberry or iPhone? Or perhaps both a Blackberry AND an iPhone? Find out in this fun and future-forward podcast conversation.

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Going beyond just the technology, John and Mike talk about the results of annual mainframe survey from BMC Software in this informative podcast. If you've wondered whether process and organizational strategies are separated for mainframe systems and distributed, or how the mainframe's reach been expanded, this podcast offers survey results and interpretation in a conversational format. Find out if attrition for the platform still exists, or perhaps, find out that previous trends have reversed. John and Mike mention rising power consumption and related costs that face every aspect of IT, and understand that mainframe introduced virtualization to computing. Listen in on their discussion and find out if the mainframe platform can indeed push more services through IT, or somehow automate in ways to optimize IT services for cost and time.

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Listen in while Peter Armstrong, corporate strategist for BMC Software, talks about the needed skills for the direction that Enterprise IT is headed. In this interview, he gives his observations on an interesting opposition he sees forming. Now that IT does not have to run as if having the lights on day to day is their only goal, and instead, running the business efficiently is their goal, what can happen with those efficiency gains? Now that people realize they can run IT more efficiently, saving money, then do they get to do lots of innovation with that money, and how do you innovate a controlled manner? So, the question Peter returns to is this: if you run IT with business goals in the forefront, then how will you resolve your priorities? Peter talks about ways to uncover the mentalities and rewards that will help move your department in the right direction as team members get out of a rut. He even describes his own perfect compensation package, and yes, a driver would be pertinent. Peter travels extensively and has plenty of great stories to go along with the workplaces that are examples of people who really "get" business service management and has a workforce that is enabled to do the same. What story goes along with his ability to recognize the Swiss flag? What's his true definition of hero? Here's a small hint, the definition of a true IT hero is a little different in this podcast than the hero described in his white paper. Take a listen and do talk back. If your experiences or "ah-ha!" moments match any of Peter's, let us know.

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Perhaps your service desks are humming along quite nicely, thank you, but you're wondering what challenges or opportunities are around the corner. Maybe you've been listening to media outlets discuss home-based and outsourced service desk workers and want to know a service desk insider's view point. If you are looking towards the future of service desks, you'll want to listen to this conversation with Doug Mueller about how standards and processes have evolved to bring us the service desk of today and tomorrow. Discover what changes in direction surprise even Doug Mueller as he builds architecture for the technologies and directions for efficient service desks both working with internal and external customer service levels. Doug's enthusiasm for taking the service desk to the next level is noticeable in this podcast, and you just might come away with some new perceptions of the service desk of the future. Does that future involve mobile computing, follow-the-sun hours coverage, and flying cars? Find out by listening in to a conversation about the future efficiency and quality levels that the service desk can attain. Bio Doug Mueller serves as Chief Technology Officer, Service Management Business Unit of BMC Software. Doug is responsible for helping drive the architecture and direction of the BSM, Service Support, and Atrium initiatives. He joined BMC in 2002 as part of the acquisition of Remedy where he was a co-founder.

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What is Service Automation and how does it go beyond Data Center Automation? What are the benefits? Where do you start? Find the answers to these questions in this interview with Brent Sullivan, Lead Solutions Manager at BMC. Learn how you can deliver IT services faster, safer, and more cost effectively in this 20-minute podcast on Service Automation.

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Are you wondering what, exactly, is a configuration management system, or CMS? How is a CMS different from a configuration management database (CMDB)? Why should IT organizations even care? While the CMS is not a new concept, it is given considerable focus in the latest release of the IT Infrastructure Library® (ITIL®), an integrated and cohesive set of best-practice recommendations with common definitions and terminology published by the Office of Government Commerce. Listen to this podcast to learn more.

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Column Technologies ? Podcast Interview with Quentin Mackey, Regional Director of Delivery for Column Technologies, Inc. - BMC Partner. Quentin Mackey looks at both the business and technology aspects of an organization so Column Technologies can provide solutions to better manage their internal and external service delivery. Through Column's approach, a business need is translated into an IT solution to support the needs of the organization. In BMC?s case, that translates to continuous training and certification, project management methodology, and adaptation of business service management.

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The value of identity management goes beyond alpha-numeric password protection. The same goes for the identity data itself. Colin Fletcher, BMC Solutions Manager, covers numerous identity management-related topics, including the how you can use identity data in conjunction with proactive incident and problem management to ensure you can get home on-time to pick up the kids, how identity management projects can lead to unanticipated results, why you need to beware of the rogue server sitting under your desk, and how regulatory compliance can become the identity management conversation starter. Join us for a thought-provoking identity management conversation.

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Customer churn is "enemy number one for business", according to Adrian Payne, professor at the New South Wales School of Marketing. In fact, in a recent survey in the Asia Pacific region, 6 out of 10 consumers changed suppliers over the past 12 months. Peter Armstrong, corporate strategist for BMC Software, joins this discussion of customer churn in Europe and the Asia Pacific regions. You'll be surprised by the demographics of churn, as well as why people choose other service providers.

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Complex IT environments are even more difficult to understand and synch if your technology includes mainframe and distributed systems. Ron Michael, lead platform administrator in R&D support at BMC Software, wants to help. He currently pens a blog on TalkBMC called "Open for Mainframe" where he uses the topic of open source as the glue linking mainframe and distributed systems. Open source, he says, is an enabling technology that helps bridge the technical gap between the mainframe and distributed worlds. With the rise of Z series Linux on the mainframe and open source continuing to be a hot topic in the distributed world, the idea behind his blog is both timely and wise. But, that's not all there is to know about Ron Michael. Steve Carl recently wrote about teaming up with Ron, saying "he brought to the table years of mainframe experience, diagnostics, and coding, as well as the kind of holistic understanding one gets from being a well rounded geek. What I am trying to say here is that Ron builds lasers for fun. Real ones. Like for 3D holography and stuff. He is also a machinist. And a helicopter pilot.". Listen in for a fascinating discussion about open source, holography, lasers, and Green IT.

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Offshoring your development and QA efforts has benefits as well as challenges. Ran Gishri, director at BMC Software, explains global sourcing and why it's important. He discusses common challenges many companies face when they decide to offshore these IT services. More importantly, he tells you exactly what application problem resolution has to do with it. There exists best practices for overcoming offshoring problem resolution challenges, and Ran shares these. He also gives concrete examples of companies that automated problem resolution in a globally distributed development environment. Implemented correctly, the benefits of offshoring far outweigh the challenges.

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The theme of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland is "The Power of Collaborative Innovation". This goes beyond a discussion about disruptive technologies like Web 2.0 to conversations about how technology can be improved and applied to solve the largest and most important world problems (like the rising rate of global poverty). The intent of this meeting is to improve the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional, and industry agendas. Mark Stouse, global communication leader at BMC Software discusses his experience there and the Davos question: "What one thing do you think that countries, companies or individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?" Mark talks about BSM's place in the solution to global problems and his opinion of what we should take away from Davos: "Never forget that we, as individuals, have the ability to make a tremendous impact if we choose to. There are a lot of people in this world who need our help. And, as important as what we do at BMC is, it is ultimately the impact we have as human beings, individually and collectively, on the larger world that is the most important thing."

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Identity management has evolved far beyond a simple understanding of who is accessing your applications and data. It is a critical and integral part of business service management and IT best practices, and its automation and integration greatly increases the value of other solutions in your environment. Bronna Shapiro, director at BMC Software, discusses the evolution of identity management systems, describes how business service management leverages its data, and the criteria that this integration should meet in order to deliver maximum value to your IT organization. She ends this podcast conversation with colorful, and real-world, examples of great identity management -- and identity management gone bad.

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According to ComputerWorld, 65% of IT professionals surveys said their IT budgets increased in 2007. The top 3 mission critical technologies that will receive funding in 2008 include software development and upgrades, network infrastructure, and data management and business intelligence. But, if you can?t justify the business value of these IT investments to your boss, you just might be putting your career in IT at risk, says Mary Nugent, vice president of software consulting at BMC Software. Mary explains the correct way to measure business value, provides guidance on the framework that will best help you in your ROI analysis, and answers questions on exactly how to calculate the correct return on your IT investments. If you've ever wondered whether or not you can truly believe in ROI, listen in.

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Software developers everywhere are in a quandary. How do they spend more time doing what they do best -- developing -- and less time in problem resolution? Problem resolution is the time-consuming and often manual process of resolving software defects, bugs, reported issues, or unexpected application behavior. This process of resolving problems is all about getting to the root cause. Once the root cause is identified, the problem can usually be resolved easily. Getting to the root cause is often what confounds developers. Ran Gishri, director at BMC Software, Inc. discusses the critical importance of automating problem resolution and how implementing something like a black box flight recorder for software applications will change your world.

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?The mainframe is dead!? is a misconception, but a notion that caused many organizations to implement distributed computing environments. Today, the bulk of the world?s most critical business applications remain on mainframes. But, the over-purchase of distributed hardware has caused server sprawl, a huge increase in resources to manage, inefficiency in the computing environment, and pollution. Consider the power consumption, heat dissipation, and carbon emissions for a single mainframe used for multiple applications compared to 100, 200, or 500 single-application distributed servers? Listen in on a conversation with Ralph Crosby, CTO of the mainframe service management business unit at BMC Software, about this topic and what zLinux has to do with it.

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Sherrie Woodring, director at BMC Software, explains the value of the Emprisa acquisition, run book automation, and integrating with the BSM strategy.

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Gary Case, IT management consultant at Pink Elephant discusses Pink's colorful history and their partnership with BMC.

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Michael Jannery, president and CEO at Entuity explains discovering business critical network devices and their partnership with BMC.

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Pete Keller, senior marketing manager for RIMM explains why the hardware behing the mobile workforce will make you hungry for a Blackberry.

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Alex Sapp, vice president of operations at Aeroprise talks about mobilizing business service management.

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Jamie Dudley, vice president and Desi DosSantos, vice president of product management at AlarmPoint discuss the product, partnership and give a live demo.

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Fred Johannessen talks about exciting partnerships, communities, and how conversation is key to building a better BSM.

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Ken Turbitt, global best practices director brings Michael Knieves with Accenture and Sharon Taylor, chief architect of ITIL and president of the Aspect Group to the ITIL table. They discuss the living ITIL, collaboration and innovation, and why it's "your ITIL".

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David Solin, R&D solutions architect, gives his reaction to the ITIL version 3 "bridge" certification upgrade course at BMC UserWorld 2007 in Vancouver.

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Sharon Taylor, chief architect of ITIL v3 and president of the Aspect Group gives a fascinating one-on-one interview to TalkBMC. She reveals whether or not there will be an ITIL v4, her favorite sport, what she likes to do in her spare time, and what's next for ITIL's chief architect.

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Atwell Williams, solutions architect in the office of the CTO, shares his excitement about BMC partners, the sessions he has attended, and the presentations he's given at UserWorld 2007 in Vancouver. He developed a special course called "So I've got a CMDB. Now what?" to answer questions customers have after they've implemented the configuration management database. He goes on to discuss the state of BSM and BSM Next (or the potential of BSM 3.0), as well as ITIL v3 concepts.

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Alisa Nessler, vice president of worldwide customer support, starts the day with TalkBMC discussing the global support organization, its challenges and changes. She explains the Premiere Support offering and enhancements in the knowledge base, as well as the BSM delivery model and its impact on the customer support environment. No matter what the future holds for support, her goal is to provide the quickest time-to-value for the customer.

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Who would want to miss an opportunity to talk to Peter Armstrong, corporate strategist for BMC Software? No worries. If you missed him at BMC UserWorld 2007 in Vancouver, you still get to listen to this conversation about where business service management has been and where it's going, as well as the key moment you know that BSM is successful in your enterprise.

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Have you ever met a geochemist? If you didn't attend BMC UserWorld 2007 in Vancouver, you missed an opportunity to listen to Sydney Dent, BMC's resident geochemist and instructor in advanced asset management topics. How do you carefully craft your CMDB so that it accomodates the needs of asset management? Sydney has all the tips and tricks.

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How does IT education keep up with agile development? Terry Vyas, manager of the instructional design team for BMC worldwide education services, discusses designing IT education courses in multiple modalities, with blended content, for constantly changing software. Does it sound impossible? Not to Terry. He breaks down this topic in simple terms.

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Anthony Orr discusses what he's most excited about at BMC UserWorld, ITIL education, and why it's important to be face-to-face with your peers in IT.

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A conversation with Lenny Warren about customizing IT education specifically for a single customer's complex environment. Lenny is also at BMC UserWorld 2007 in Vancouver to teach tips and tricks for performance tuning, ITSM, and the CMDB.

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Don't let Nick Pachnos fool you into thinking he's just into marketing. This former MVS systems programmer talks about BSM and Linux on the mainframe as well as what's missing from HP's recent press release about business service management.

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Senior technical instructor Paul Buffington is enthusiastic about the course he's teaching at BMC UserWorld 2007 in Vancouver -- the CMDB Architect's Kit. He's focused on helping IT professionals move up the maturity curve, especially moving from the technology layer to the process layer.

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Julie Hawkes discusses ITSM and CMDB education courses she is instructing and why she is passionate about watching her customers grow in their IT education.

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Why is Agile so important and who's doing it well? Traditional development methodologies like "waterfall" aren't flexible and don't allow for changes in features or functions as the software is being developed. Using the Agile approach, developers at can produce enterprise software in half the time, with more flexibility to market needs. But, that's not all that happens with Agile. Development teams become more productive, costs go down, and quality goes up. Everyone wins with the Agile approach.

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First, it was whole-machine virtualization; now, application virtualization is taking the enterprise by storm. But what is application virtualization, and what advantages can it bring to the corporate IT environment? In this podcast, Jeanne Morain, senior manager of configuration automation products at BMC Software, Inc., is joined by Jonathan Clark, president and CTO of a new BMC partner, Thinstall, maker of a clientless, agentless virtualization application solution. Together, they discuss the advantages of Thinstall's agentless technology, how combining application virtualization with configuration management delivers great value, and more.

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Education is not just for the classroom anymore for several reasons, according to Linda Moss, vice president of BMC Educational Services. The classroom format does not work for everyone, travel and education budgets are decreasing, and the number of global IT offices is increasing, to name only a few reasons. In addition, companies are expecting their education dollars to produce practical skills that can be employed during the work day, not just familiarity with a theory or a certificate. Linda, a Ph.D. in education, discusses these IT education trends and others, as well as what BMC is doing to meet them.

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Lori Cook, vice president of worldwide services and channels and emerging markets, takes us on a tour through the partner channel at BMC Software. In this introduction to our partner series, Lori discusses the partner landscape, including the reorganization and strengthening of this unique revenue channel at BMC.

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Whether you refer to it as identity management or access management, it's all about understanding who has rights to access your data. You need an audit trail, the ability to assign roles and responsibilities, and manage passwords. But, how does this fit in with ITIL version 3 and the CMDB? Ken Turbitt, global best practices director at BMC Software explains.

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What software applications extend to your iPhone? Scott Isensee, user interface architect for BMC Software, Inc., and whurley, BMC's chief open source architect, used iPhone DevCamp as an opportunity to experiment and find out. If you are into Agile development, listen to this podcast and find out what two developers, two visual designers, and one usability expert accomplished over a weekend.

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There are five areas important to the business service management market right now. These include service-oriented architectures (SOA), server consolidation and virtualization, the ?greening? of the data center, process execution excellence (or business process excellence), and the application of lean manufacturing principles to data centers. Tom Bishop, CTO of BMC Software, Inc. discusses each of these and how IT must think differently about innovation and technology.

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Whether you already have in mind a grand plan for implementing your CMDB, or you don?t have a clue where to begin, this podcast is for you. Tom Bishop, chief technology officer at BMC Software, has helped implement more than 500 CMDBs at various customer sites, so he is well-positioned to offer advice that can help your CMDB implementation run much more smoothly.

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From small CMDB implementations with 5,000 configuration items (CIs), to large implementations with millions, Jeanne Morain, senior manager of configuration automation products at BMC Software, has seen it all. Listen to this podcast for her real-world tips on how to optimize your configuration management database (CMDB) as well as insights on service delivery, discovery, and BSM.

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The BMC Developer Network (BMCDN) is a new community launched by BMC Software where partners, customers, and even BMC competitors can comprehensively collaborate on development projects in the systems management space. Fred Johannessen, vice president of technology alliances, and William Hurley (a.k.a. "whurley"), chief architect of open source strategy at BMC, discuss how this new, open development environment goes hand-in-hand with open source. Both whurley and Johannessen agree that the BMCDN is simply an extension of BMC's philosophy, which has historically supported the ecosystem required to make quick technological advances in business service management.

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The guide to help you with successful CMDB planning, CI building, and every other logical step of your CMDB implementation -- the Step-By-Step Guide to Building the CMDB -- is now available. Ken Turbitt, BMC Software?s global best practices director and one of several co-authors, shares why this book was created, what it offers (and what more he wishes it offered), and how you can get your copy.

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Today, businesses can enjoy innovative, interactive ways to access information thanks to ongoing technology advances. And, BMC Software makes the most of these advances -- particularly Rich Internet Applications (RIA) -- to redefine the face of its BSM offering. With RIA, BMC Software can provide nearly real-time information available through visual dashboards. These dashboards are designed not just for IT users, but for business leaders, too. According to Ashish Arora, BMC?s Solutions Architect, ?the brand ambassador that speaks directly to the customer is the user interface.? This podcast features Ashish and BMC Software?s chief technology officer, Tom Bishop, discussing the strategy, design, and technology behind BMC Dashboards for BSM. Tom and Ashish outline the value proposition, compare alternate technologies, and detail the internal review process and stakeholder feedback that produced the dashboard offering. They also share their vision of getting decision-enabling information to the right users at the right time efficiently with techniques like progressive disclosure and explorative animation. Listen as they share their vision for the future: combining IT and business metrics, finding the ?golden mean? between a rich user experience and processing, and delivering information simply, across a multitude of devices.

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People. Processes. Technology. Still the basics of Business Service Management (BSM). But as more companies evolve and settle into BSM, new holes and service needs are being discovered, like the role of the Operational Architect. Join Wiley Vasquez, BMC Practice Manager for IT Process Consulting, as he discusses the gambit of new trends, available services, and best practices like ITIL Version 3. In this podcast, Wiley discusses new concepts, like that of the IT organization as the operating system, and having a team of people create a workflow within an organization for how people, processes, and technology are the most effectively delivered. Management from various organizations have also expressed a need for guidance from BMC on topics like IT governance, IT process, and the IT service portfolio. Wiley discusses the BMC response, as well as delves into ITIL Version 3 and shares his experiences participating in the review process when this new version was developed. Listen to this podcast to hear about the latest trends and developments within BSM.

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Most people who have VPN tunnels trip in and out of their perimeters numerous times each day. What they don't realize is that this could open up a back-door entry for "black-hat hackers" and lead to loss of all of their important data. That's when perimeters could spell trouble and become unreliable; that's also when you need to exercise a defensive depth and take security down to the level of the machines and systems. In this podcast, Jeff Bohren, software architect for the Identity Management business unit at BMC Software, Inc., discusses the concepts of de-perimeterization and quantum tunneling, and discusses current roadblocks to exercising security to the bone, even with the technological capability.

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How many subject-matter experts does it take to develop the Configuration Items (CIs) for your CMDB? And, how many different times zones do you have to criss-cross to be able to engage in a group discussion with all of those experts? If you're a configuration manager following a traditional, top-down approach to building a CMDB, you're probably facing a huge challenge identifying your CIs, building the relationships between them, and putting together your service model. However, another option is the introduction of open design concepts into your process similar to those used in social media tools like wikis and folksonomies. This can be the easier way to help you extract and corral all of the information that is tucked inside each SME, as well as ensuring your CMDB is continually maintained.

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ITIL version 3 certification is now available, and classes for this new certification are filling up. But, what if you already have your ITIL certification? Is it still good? Should you bother to update your ITIL training, and if so, why? Do you have to commit to three more days of classroom training, or is there an easier way? Anthony Orr, global best practice director at the BMC Software Business School, answers these questions and helps you easily understand ITIL's new "lifecycle" approach by taking you through the movie, "The Three Amigos," and how that relates to ITIL v3.

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The phrase "out of the box" can raise skepticism in even the most optimistic information technology, or business professional, especially when you pair the term with a project like an ITIL implementation -- often perceived as complex and ambitious, even lofty. But have we all been burned just too many times with the promise of out-of-the box simplicity? Is ITIL out-of-the box really possible, but we are simply afraid to see it? If ITIL is available out of the box, what actually comes in the box?

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Just as today's enterprise is becoming more complicated than ever -- a mix of multiple platforms, vendor software, open source, mainframe, and distributed systems -- the quest for simplicity is becoming more important. Simplicity can mean the difference between an efficient and agile IT that provides great service, and an IT that is slow, costly, and ineffectual. Simplicity in managing your infrastructure can mean the difference between IT being a business drag or a business driver. Join us for a conversation with Scott Sloan, solutions marketing manager for infrastructure and application management for BMC Software, about how simplicity rules in today's complex global IT environment.

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Israel Gat discusses the difference between traditional software development methodology and agile software development, or ?Scrum,? which is being used at BMC to enable rapid software development. This agile approach, combined with a "craftsmanship" mentality, has paid off in more ways than one.

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How many passwords do you have? Maybe 5, 6 or more? If you?re lucky, you have one that works everywhere. If you've been phished, though, your luck has run out. Most of us have to remember several combinations of passwords to keep our identity safe, to combat phishing and to accommodate merchants? marketing efforts. How will user-centric identity technologies like Open Space and the use of InfoCards offer an alternative to password alphabet soup? Steve Anderson, identity management product manager at BMC Software offers insight into the latest identity management buzz words: OpenID, Microsoft CardSpace, and InfoCard.

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Open Source can influence every department and aspect of your organization from R&D, marketing and legal, down to the financial ledger. The most revolutionary aspect of open source is it?s collaborative nature. Similar to social media, open source requires community collaboration and conversation. Listen to this podcast to hear whurley and Steve Carl?s conversation about Dell?s new Linux-loaded PCs, the pitfalls of a patent-happy companies and the financial impact of open source.

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Open source is not only a pervasive buzz term in the IT community; it?s a loaded term as well. Open source is an idea, a culture, process and a journey. In this podcast Steve Carl and whurley (William Hurley) discuss these concepts as well as the difference between radical innovation and modification; why IBM has embraced open source; the fear of open source, its origins and its future.

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With all the hype about building IT-Business alignment, it's becoming more difficult to understand what really drives value. What are the key areas to focus on as we work toward building an IT organization that's more responsive to the business? What are the key foundational elements that will make us successful? Is a CMDB the answer? This podcast interview, featuring BMC Software's Brian Emerson and Forrester Research's J.P. Garbani, provides information you'll need to navigate the journey toward IT-business alignment.

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Type "ITIL training" into a search engine, and you will find a plethora of ITIL certification and educational opportunities. It's a very pervasive topic, but depending on your occupation and level of interest, you might need different knowledge than the person in the cube next door. Not everyone needs to be certified, and some people need more than just foundation training. Since ITIL training can't be "one size fits all," how do you know what courses to take, or exactly what you really need to know about ITIL? BMC Software's Anthony Orr, global best practices director for the BMC Business School, has answers to these questions, and more. Listen in for a new perspective on the ITIL Learning Path.

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If you're in business today, you've heard the phrase, "customer churn." Customer churn is another way of saying that if the service you provide your customers is not adequate, those customers are going to do business with another provider. A new survey on customer churn, commissioned by BMC Software and conducted by Research Now, gives a detailed picture of the demographics, industries, causes, and effects of customer churn in Europe (easily extensible to the U.S.), and guess what? It's all about looking at service from the customer's point of view rather than from the company's or looking from the outside in. Yet, BMC's Peter Armstrong believes that with Business Service Management, your IT department can help calm the customer churn, and enable your business to truly see what your service looks like, from the customer's point of view, and do what it takes to keep them happy. Tune in to this podcast interview to get more insights about IT and customer service, and download the survey to get all the details.

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The mainframe is not dead, but it has certainly evolved. Says Carl Greiner, senior vice president at Ovum, the mainframe environment has changed from monolithic and centralized, to distributed and tightly intertwined with other computing resources in a complex enterprise infrastructure. As a result, mainframe operations staff faces a significant challenge: how to effectively manage the mainframe in this distributed computing environment.

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Today's IT vulnerability threats, coupled with regulatory compliance requirements, mean that the reality of securing operations has become much more complex. Today, with ITIL change processes, CobIT controls, Sarbanes-Oxley, and other factors, companies require an enterprise risk management approach that recognizes and mitigates the impact of risk on business services. Scott Crawford, senior analyst of Enterprise Management Associates; Burt Toma, group manager for BMC Software's Configuration Management Product Management team; and Ross Brown, president of eEye Digital Security, a leader in vulnerability management and assessment tools, discuss this topic and the evolving issue of who is responsible and who is accountable for IT security -- and the challenges that presents.

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Bringing open source and commercial software models together may seem impossible at first glance, but William Hurley (a.k.a. "Whurley") understands the symbiosis. The future of systems management, he says, can be summed up in two words: eliminate complexity. And, the principles behind business service management (BSM) are key to eliminating complexity in the IT infrastructure and aligning IT with the business.

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IT organizations face a critical challenge in providing holistic metrics that matter to the business when reporting tools are scattered across applications from a variety of vendors. Without the capability to analyze what is happening, IT and business objectives cannot align, and business service management becomes impossible to achieve. Brian Emerson, senior solutions marketing manager at BMC Software, discusses existing reporting technologies and the need for them to mature, as well as how you can use a dashboard solution to give you an interactive, summarized, and cross-functional view of IT performance to optimize decisions and accelerate results for your business.

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TalkBMC listens in on a conversation about Identity Management, but more specifically, the issues and pains surrounding password management. Universal pain is felt when users have to keep up with a myriad of passwords in a number of applications. The more often each application requires that the password be reset, the more frustrated they become. Did you also know that each call to your service desk about password management takes up at least five to eight minutes of their time? How can you solve this problem right now? Chip Gliedman, analyst at Forrester specializing in service management and help desk issues, and Bob Worner, director of product management at BMC Software's Identity Management business unit, tell you how.

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Global companies have spent over $25 billion on enterprise applications to improve employee productivity. However, employees spend increasing amounts of time away from their desks, and the benefits derived from these investments are lost. This phenomenon of mobile employees and desk-bound tools causes a "problem resolution" gap. In service management contexts, this gap causes missed service expectations, poor response times, endless backlogs, expense "leaks," and dissatisfied customers. Since IT applications are growing and becoming increasingly complex, this gap is widening and its impact on business performance is increasing.

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The IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is set to refresh with a new set of volumes in April of 2007, and there are already a lot of questions around it. Why does this matter to you, and should you race to adopt these new volumes? Is your existing ITIL certification still valid? More importantly, has all the work you've done (or are still doing) with ITIL version 2 been a waste of time? Ken Turbitt, global best practices director at BMC Software and ITIL reviewer, answers these questions. Version 3 of ITIL is a significant change -- an entire rewrite of ITIL, for that matter. But, it's just another stepping stone in your continuously improving best practices lifecycle.

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In response to a request from an analyst in our audience, we've connected with Adolfo "Duff" Ibanez, technical services manager at BMC Software. He discusses how BMC is changing the way it does business by delivering a solution to partners that enables a real-time and unwired demonstration of business service management. Flight Deck Global Solutions Site has enabled BMC and its partners to truly move from a product to a solution sales model. It's a simple, customizable, and unwired way to demo BSM in action. If you're an analyst or partner, listen in.

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Kia Behnia, chief corporate architect at BMC Software, discusses the evolution of the CMDB and its similarities to the purpose of personal information manager (PIM). Many companies over the years have put together various management systems and have to tell that system about the environment; this is analogous to the information put into a PIM. Kia talks about data organization in the earlier PIMs and his pet peeves when it comes to information-store usability. He also gives advice on balancing efficiency with business alignment so that your IT department can become a true activator for the business itself.

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How has the role of the software architect changed through the years and what will it look like in the future? Jeff Hodges, manager of the Client Architecture group at BMC Software, Inc., says companies have traditionally looked at architects for their specialties with certain databases, applications, or systems. Companies with more mature IT organizations are realizing today that this role has evolved into that of someone who not only understands their technology-specialty areas, but also what is happening, on a larger scale, to the organization. This emerging role of the business service management architect is the key to helping IT successfully align and support the business.

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In this interview, Mark Stabler, corporate strategist for BMC Software, Inc., discusses the new year ahead. What's on his shortlist of big social, economic, and technological trends that will impact the market in 2007? He's created his own rating scale: "0" = the gloom-and-doom days of "do more with less," and "10" = giddy, Web 2.0 spending. See if you agree with Mark's list, and hear his thoughts on whether IT spending will match a company's top-line growth and what's on customers' short list for IT investments in 2007.

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Forget the "glass ceiling." Mary Nugent, vice president of software consulting at BMC Software, discusses how far women are progressing, not only in technology, but in business in general. Mary discusses the women who inspire her. Among those she most admires are Meg Whitman of eBay, Linda Dillman of Wal-Mart, Anne Livermore of HP, and Melinda Gates -- who was a product manager at Microsoft before she undertook the task of influencing Bill Gates on world-changing matters like bringing technology into human issues.

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Historically, the mainframe IT model meant computers intended to help a business run were centralized and very expensive. In the 1980s, the availability of small, less expensive, and high-powered machines made the distributed model possible, and hundreds, or thousands, of distributed systems were installed in traditionally mainframe organizations. But, due to growth and complexity in databases today, instead of managing a single mainframe, IT organizations everywhere are managing hundreds at a time. In addition, the cost of the distributed platform has risen because the capabilities of these systems have increased, whereas the cost of the mainframe has decreased due to competitive pressures. What we're seeing today, says Ralph Crosby, chief technology officer for the Mainframe Service Management business unit at BMC Software, is some convergence in the mainframe and distributed world. And, that calls for a big step in the evolution of management tools.

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How are enterprises all over the world changing and what are the drivers for this transformation? Wiley Vasquez, chief services architect for the On Demand and Managed Services business unit at BMC Software takes on this question with a unique perspective. As businesses grow, the complexity of their IT environment grows as well. This complexity in the infrastructure is leading businesses all over the world to consider a sourcing-oriented architecture - using outside service providers to deliver their business services. This hub-and-spoke model separates the core competencies of the business from services that should be delivered by outsourcing.

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At one time or another, virtually everyone who works with mainframes has heard that the mainframe is dying. This has been especially true in recent years, with the media publishing forecasts that foretell its imminent demise. But Mike Moser, product management director and program executive at BMC Software, disagrees. He has gathered actual customer data showing that more than 80 percent of the respondents say that mainframe use is holding steady or is actually growing at their company as new applications and new workloads are configured. In this interview, Mike discusses the important developments and investments being made for this platform and the challenges and priorities of the organizations that have mainframes in their IT environment today.

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What is the future of usability? Whether it's software, hardware, or any other technology, one thing is for sure: It' all about ease of use. But, that's a vague term, a catch-all phrase that can just muddy the waters. Just what does "usability" mean? What's the history behind the term, what's driving trends in product usability today, and what are the biggest challenges in finding usability nirvana? Dr. Randolph Bias and Scott Isensee give sometimes opposing views for these questions, and more.

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In this interview, Peter Armstrong, corporate strategist at BMC Software, shares common IT horror stories, their fixes, and strategies to maximize IT business value. Peter claims that the approach you take in dealing with potential IT nightmares is critical. It can make the difference between having a well-run organization that meets business objectives, or one that could get the corporate ax due to poor customer satisfaction.

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What if you were part of an organization that has already successfully implemented a configuration management database (CMDB), the heart of ITIL - what happens next? Ken Turbitt, Global Best Practices director at BMC Software, answers that question by using the Gartner Hype Cycle for IT Operations Management, published this year. He discusses the technologies you need to understand now and the key market drivers like IT maturity, infrastructure stability, and organizational agility.

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Achieving improvements in service quality and reducing service disruption through effective Service Level Management can ultimately lead to significant savings in time and money. This process is used by organizations to determine the level of IT service needed to support the business. It also enables monitoring to identify whether the required service levels, and predetermined Service Level Agreements (SLAs), are being achieved.

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This ITIL process ensures that the IT infrastructure's capacity matches the fluctuating and evolving demands of the business -- in the most cost-effective and timely manner. Achieving this requires that you understand how current IT resources are being used, then develop a Capacity Plan. Once you understand the current use and future requirements, effective Capacity Management can help you match resources with business needs in the most efficient way possible.

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Availability of IT services has never been more important to the success of the business. In most companies today, if IT stops, so does the business. These days,advancements in technology have netted significant improvements in the IT infrastructure's availability and reliability . Fault-tolerant, and error-correction, design features in hardware and software now reduce the risk of IT component failures, providing improved levels of availability for the business.

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In today's highly competetive and service-oriented business environment, organizations are judged on their ability to continuously operate and provide service at all times. This ITIL process is concerned with managing your ability to continue to provide pre-determined and agreed-upon levels of IT services that support the minimum business requirements following a business interruption. Interruptions may result from an application or system failure, or a complete loss of the business premises. Business processes and technology are so interdependent today that an effective Service Continuity Management process is critical to your overal business and IT service continuity planning.

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IT Financial Management is the discipline of ensuring that IT infrastructure is obtained at the most effective price. This involves accurately calculating what it costs to provide IT services so that an organization can clearly understand IT charges. These costs may then be recovered (or charged back) from the customer of the service.For accurate budgeting, it is also essential to forecast future IT infrastructure costs; this is also an important component of the Financial Management ITIL process.

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Service Desk is the only ITIL function. All the rest of the modules you will study for your ITIL Foundation Certification are ITIL processes. The Service Desk provides a single point of contact for advice, guidance, and the rapid restoration of IT service(s). Since it is the users' single point of contact with the IT organization, their experiences with the Service Desk greatly influence their level of satisfaction and overall perception of IT and your entire organization. Listen in to understand the critical success factors for the Service Desk.

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The goals of incident management are to restore normal service as quickly as possible, to minimize the adverse impact of incidents on business operations, and to ensure that the highest possible levels of service quality and availability are maintained. Learn the true definition of an incident, where incidents can originate, and the best practice processes for handling these. (Incidentally, you should download this recording.)

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The Problem Management ITIL process differs from Incident Management in that its main goals are to detect the underlying cause of an incident, to resolve it, and to prevent it from happening again. This process is in place to minimize the adverse impact of incidents and problems on the business that are caused by errors in the IT infrastructure and to prevent incidents from recurring, related to these errors. To achieve this, you must get to the "root cause" of the incident and initiate actions to improve or correct the situation. This podcast teaches you the relationships Problem Management has with other ITIL processes and an easy way to study for the ITIL Foundation Certification.

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Configuration Management is the ITIL process concerned with identifying, recording, and reporting IT components including their versions and relationships to other IT components. Items under this process's control include hardware, software, and documentation. These items are stored in the Configuration Management database (CMDB) and are known as Configuration Items (CIs). Configuration Management is not the same as Asset Management, but you have to tune in to figure out exactly why these disciplines are different.

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Change is a constant in business. In IT, where a complex infrastructure is the norm, changes impact the business. This means that you have no choice but to spend a significant amount of time assessing the impact of business changes on IT, analyzing the impact of IT changes on the business, identifying the problems that continually arise and require additional changes, and introducing new ideas and tools that cause even more changes. Managing change has now become a full-time occupation and is an important ITIL process to understand. Change Management, when done well, results in minimal risk to the business, and that's the most important goal.

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The term "Release" is used to describe a collection of authorized changes to an IT service. Every organization should have a policy for managing releases and roles and responsibilities should be formally defined so that everyone understands their job and level of authority as well as the tasks of others involved in the Release Management process.

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Data center efficiency is the ratio between how much useful work is done and the total cost of IT. It seems like a simple equation, but it has Dave Wagner, solutions management director for Capacity Management and Provisioning at BMC Software, scratching his head. The problem, he says, is the price of oil. With energy costs rising as much as 30 percent per year, depending on where you live, the dollars you spend on power will soon surpass what you spend on servers. This poses a problem for data center managers who need to accurately manage capacity. We can measure the cost of power at the data center level and even down to the rack level, but there is no way to measure power consumed per server. If you've ever thought about "going green" in your data center, be sure to listen in.

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Regulatory compliance for corporations isn't new, though it has become a popular topic and, sometimes, the subject of intense media coverage. In the end, it's really all about risk, and how your business manages it. Cindy Sterling, a director of BMC Software's Identity Management business unit, can provide the "411" on risk management. She takes you through the definitions, critical points, and key steps so that you can better understand risk management for your IT organization. And, if you'd like to see how best practice standards like CobIT map back to business service management, she gives you a visual reference so you can correlate the control objectives to your service-level objectives.

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Business Service Management (BSM) is the methodology that will change the way you do business -- it allows you to manage IT from a business perspective. With SAP applications installed at over 32,500 companies worldwide and growing fast, BSM for SAP is a necessary topic for any organization that wants to architect their SAP environment from the perspective of the business. Marike Owen, senior product manager at BMC Software, walks you through the steps you need to take to do this and recommends a complimentary webinar on BSM for SAP.

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You're hearing a lot of things about IT best practices right now. ITIL refresh ... CobIT 3 ... ITIL version 3 ... CobIT 4 ... what's the difference between all of these, and why are they important to your business? Ken Turbitt and Peter Hill are here to set the record straight. You see, it's not really an "ITIL versus CobIT" world.

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TuringSMI has been providing ITIL expertise for over fifteen years and combined with its BMC software expertise, is able to provide clients with an effective one-stop stop for BMC software solutions. TuringSMI is also a Telecommunications OSS and eTOM Best Practices expert and has developed a range of components that extend the BMC Remedy ITSM functionality to meet the specific requirements of the Telecommunications industry. Gary Brooks discusses their newest solution suite, OS3, which answers the specific challenges of the Telco industry.

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Not too many years ago, IT service management was about managing devices typically confined within the walls of data centers. As devices were combined into distributed IT infrastructures that extended well beyond data center walls, IT professionals had to raise the bar. As a result, IT service management evolved from managing devices to managing the infrastructure. Now, many IT professionals have set their sights on Business Service Management (BSM). To progress toward BSM, IT organizations are again raising the bar, implementing solutions that enable the staff to visualize and understand the relationships of the IT infrastructure components to the business services they support. The next logical step in this progression is to look beyond business services and begin thinking in terms of business processes. This is really IT growing up, Mary says.

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Karen Sinclair is responsible for the Service Impact Management and Event Management product line. She tells us about her experience at BMC UserWorld 2006. Despite targeting the learning sessions by audience, sheís found that many in IT are interested in crossing over and learning something new about an area outside of their specialty. To Karen, this is perfect timing, as service model creation and ownership of the CMDB requires collaboration across all IT departments as well as other areas of the business. Itís just another example of how business service management is changing the future of business.

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Remember when you were young and loved to play in a sandbox? Well, Walt Giroir discusses some of the cool new features of the Service Impact Management and Event Management product line, including the addition of sandboxes that allow everyone involved to help build a service model together. He talks about the next big step in the evolution of IT: moving from an event management model to a service impact management model and how that allows you to view events within a business context. The technology is here to help you quickly realize significant value to your business and get you on the road to business service management.

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Does the idea of implementing a CMDB seem, well, overwhelming? Brent Brightwell, senior solutions marketing manager at BMC Software, can help. Brent understands that the cure for the common feeling of IT dread is knowing where to start for your enterprise - a comprehensive discovery solution. Yes, you can't manage what you can't see ... but is it all just about discovering IT assets? No, says Brent, now there is technology that allows you to discover people and business processes as well. This is the only correct way to build the foundation for your CMDB. So, relax, take a deep breath, and discover how to get it right. (The doctor is in.)

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Have you ever thought there might be a correlation between implementing ITIL and listening to a great orchestra? TalkBMC caught these three ITIL experts after a session at BMC UserWorld 2006 called "Orchestrating ITIL", where we were guided through the ITIL process in a very musical way. Malcolm discusses what most people forget about ITIL and why, Ken talks about the sessions that are most popular, and Peter offers his opinions while playing the piano.

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Chris Williams takes you into the mind of a partner at BMC UserWorld 2006 in San Francisco. He works with BMC delivering professional consulting services to customers who want to implement identity management right in their IT environment. But, the thing he's most excited about? ITIL, of course.

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Have you ever wondered what the face of BSM might look like? Scott reveals it and takes us into a deeper dive of the BMC Dashboards for BSM. Not only can you view pods by ITIL process, you can also completely customize your view according to what is important for your business. Expecting to launch in October, this product takes the data from four other BMC products and wraps it up into a beautiful BSM package, so that you can finally run IT from the perspective of the business.

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Bill Miller brings you right into the action at BMC UserWorld 2006 in San Francisco and reveals that the sessions are overflowing and cannot be easily ended due to all the questions and the interest that arise at the end of the sessions. People are excited about a number of things, including BMC's commitment to the mainframe, enterprise scheduling, agentless technology announcements, and the fact that BMC will be the only ISV to deliver end-to-end transaction management across the mainframe and distributed environments.

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Ash walks us through the BMC Dashboards for BSM, which enables the executive to have a powerful view of the IT organization. On a single screen, you can see problems by department, organization, and business driver, the critical nature of the problems that are happening, and if your team is handling them in the proper manner. If you want to find out about how you're living up to your service level agreements in real time, you've got to see this.

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Tom Bishop can't wait to see Geoffrey Moore, Managing Director of the Chasm Group, talk about Innovation in his keynote on Friday. Live at BMC UserWorld 2006 in San Francisco, he discusses the most profound thing that BSM will do, the sessions he favors, and reveals the secret expectations of a CEO on the CIO.

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Jim Grant discusses the state of BSM and the powerful impact it is having on the world. He shares what he's hearing from customers and discusses the wave of excitement that is building, something you both hear and feel at BMC UserWorld 2006 in San Francisco. He talks about high performing partners, the shifts happening in the industry and the sessions you're missing.

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There is so much excitement at UserWorld that it's hard to know where to begin. Some of the most interesting things are the product integrations that Atwell is seeing and customer's reactions to the technology and the strategy of BMC. Atwell teaches a Service Management course at BMC UserWorld 2006 in San Francisco, empowering you to run IT as a service to the business. Don't fret if you missed it. Atwell can be found at the BMC Business School in Houston, Texas.

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Doug was the co-founder of Remedy and loves developing products. But, when he's not doing that, he's talking to you. You've probably seen him in his Hawaiian shirt and tennis shoes, welcoming you to keynote sessions at BMC UserWorld 2006 in San Francisco. But, if you stopped to talk to him, you would find out about the future of service management, what he's hearing from BMC customers, the most exciting things about UserWorld to a CTO, and the sessions he can't wait to see.

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Ah, remember those years when ERP was catching on in the marketplace? All the re-engineering of your business processes, the time, the cost (the pain)? Business Service Management (BSM) is important, but is a change in culture required? What are the steps to take, and what are the benefits? Dave Wilt, senior solutions marketing manager at BMC may not be a tech geek, but his 17 years in high-tech have been spent helping people understand, improve, and optimize their business processes. If you're anxious to see BSM in action, let Dave be your guide.

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Yes, there is a lot more to know and envision about the CMDB, and in this interview, Tom Bishop shares his thoughts. What if it comprised solely business information instead of just IT assets? Tom disagrees with this approach and offers a few examples of his theory of relativity around data. The future of BSM, says Tom, is as tied to the success of the CMDB as the future of the definition of the Internet is to the DNS. And the future opportunity for BSM is just ahead of us -- once we get out of the way.

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A little technology buzzword bingo, anyone? Forget about prep work; Tom Bishop talks candidly about his vision of the future for XML, AJAX, RSS, Linux, social media, and "Web 3.0." Will the Web ultimately function as the operating system? And, oh yes, what about the possibility of life on other planets?

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Is software as a service a great idea that will never really catch on? Tom Bishop thinks it is a critical and important shift that is happening in the marketplace today. Not every application can be best leveraged as a service, but he believes that a major share will be delivered this way in the future. Finally, Tom considers Web services and the re-emerging role of management architectures: Will these become hot tech topics once again?

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In this podcast, Tom Bishop shares his vision for BSM nirvana, and describes why the launch of BSM at BMC this year was so important. He also discusses a variety of topics including data center optimization, the service desk, and BMC UserWorld. Tom makes some predictions about the data center of tomorrow and how the current (loose) connections IT has with the business will tighten, and the two will align and integrate. He also shares some thoughts about ITIL, process improvement, and the impact of the fall of Enron (and the inception of Sarbanes-Oxley) on big business.

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With 80 percent of IT budgets today being used to maintain the status quo, very little is left over to implement newer technology and services that will help take the business to the next level. How can you lower costs, yet improve services and unleash innovation in your enterprise? Fred Johannessen and Julie Craig have the formula. Done right, you can achieve datacenter optimization and realize significant and demonstrable savings that can be used for new technology to grow your business.

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George Gallop heads the Capital Markets Group of TuringSMI, a BMC global VAR and partner company. In this podcast interview, he discusses the financial services and investment banking industries and what role technology plays in financial and brokerage transactions. What are the drivers for growth and the important things happening that call for better technology and processes? George answers these questions and more.

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If you've ever wondered what technology and social media enthusiasts talk about when they go to lunch, download this podcast. Anne Gentle, information developer at BMC Software, discusses her popular blog on TalkBMC and gives advice on how to build a loyal following for a blog. Where does blogging fit in an enterprise communications strategy? She touches on this, and all the topics she is most enthusiastic about, like the technology that makes it easier for people to find information, social media, and wikis.

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What does Linux have to do with BMC Software, or with any company that creates and sells enterprise software? Are there natural "sweet spots" between Linux and the mainframe? Steve Carl, manager of R&D Open Systems Support for BMC Software, manages a team that supports about 4,000 computers (1,000 are Linux) and 5,000 to 6,000 operating system images in Houston. Steve talks about his 17-year history with the company and answers questions you might never have thought of about Linux.

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Andi Mann, senior analyst at Enterprise Management Associates, and Kia Behnia, chief corporate architect at BMC Software, explore the concept of client management and how automating the software request, change, execution, and verification process can reduce costs and improve corporate compliance. This has become an increasingly complex topic due to the increasing complexity of end-user systems and compliance requirements. Learn how connecting the entire change process via an automated ITIL best practices solution offers the right set of applications and business approaches for your complex IT environment.

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Peter Armstrong, corporate strategist at BMC Software, is excited about his recent visit to the Toyota Formula 1 racing plant in Germany where he saw how they rely on technology to win. Toyota has five fundamental principles called "The Toyota Way": teamwork, respect, challenge, Genchi Genbutsu (get to the roots of the problem), and Kaizen (continuous improvement). These principles are in place to avoid waste, and it was a natural fit to apply these to technology. So, Toyota decided to lap the competition and implement a configuration management database (CMDB) that aligns their business with IT. But will embracing business service management get them the checkered flag?

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Due to cost-cutting, technology silos, and the lack of repeatable best practice processes, most IT support groups work in a REACTIVE mode ñ struggling to efficiently respond to incidents that have already occurred. And when you add the mounting pressure from service level agreements ñ there is little opportunity for your support group to proactively PREVENT future incidents or IMPROVE the overall quality of service. Tony Sanders, Senior Business Solutions Manager with BMC Software and Dennis Drogseth, Vice President of Enterprise Management Associates talk about this problem and the real solution.

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Your IT staff faces a daunting challenge in protecting the IT ecosystem on a 24x7 basis. Bronna Shapiro, Director of Infrastructure and Applications Management at BMC Software discusses the role of the mainframe within the IT environment and the risks to business operations and continuity posed by events other than disaster or hardware failures. Bronna shares one very personal business disaster experience and talks about how solutions based upon intelligent automation can mitigate threats to business continuity and significantly increase your operational efficiency. But, the solutions also have to be based upon the broader context of Business Service Management.

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Why should your company implement a CMDB? How can you cost justify it? That's the rub, says Atwell Williams, Director of IT Service Management at BMC Software, Inc. Thinking of it alone isn't what makes the CMDB valuable. But, thinking of it as a way to relate your IT infrastructure components to your business services and processes using configuration management is when its significance is truly discovered. Are you part of one of those companies that goes out and purchases technology, but then doesn't do anything with it? If you've bought CMDB technology or are implementing it, you'll be interested in what Atwell has to say.

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Ken Turbitt, Global Best Practices Director at BMC Software, discusses Malcolm Fry and Peter Armstrong, BSM dashboards, BMC's launch of BSM 2.0, and BMC UserWorld 2006, scheduled to be held in San Francisco August 29 - September 1, 2006. Ken will play a significant role in the best practices track at UserWorld, which will have five sessions available each day. Since BMC has solutions for virtually every layer of IT, maybe it should just be called IT World. Get your ITIL certification, learn about standards and best practices, and enjoy San Francisco in August ... all at BMC UserWorld 2006.

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With all the regulatory compliance mandates that have your organization under the gun and the complexity of your IT environment that keeps you up at night, it is difficult to decide what to do about standards and best practices. But, if you're truly committed to IT Service Management, you'll consider ISO 20000. It's all about improving the quality of the services you provide, says Ken. Gaining ISO 20000 accreditation, integrated and carefully aligned with ITIL and your business service management initiative, will help you stand apart from the competition.

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Bob Beauchamp, president and CEO of BMC Software, Inc., shares his vision of the future of BMC, and of technology. Things are changing rapidly in technology, and in our relationship to technology as well. Today, the basic assumption is that bandwidth, storage, and processing will become ubiquitous. And the limitations will not be in the technology, Bob says, but in the imagination necessary to make the impossible, possible. Bob talks about how children today work with technology in a very different way from our generation, and how future generations of workers will be unwired but plugged-in, working real-time from wherever they happen to be at that moment.

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Bob Beauchamp, president and CEO of BMC Software, Inc., talks about stepping back and performing a thorough assessment of BMC in the midst of a revolution in IT and in the technology industry. In 2001, BMC had to be changed from the inside out, reducing expenses and transforming the culture. He discusses how BMC used the examples of SAP and Siebel and changed its strategy to focus on developing products for managing IT infrastructure and processes. This new strategy, called Business Service Management (BSM), was developed and evangelized at BMC Software, and is now being embraced by customers all over the world.

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Bob Beauchamp, president and CEO of BMC Software, Inc., joined the company in 1988 and became CEO in 2001. He contrasts and compares the BMC of 1988 and 2001 to the BMC of today, taking the listener through the changes in culture, the company's drop in share price and revenue that occurred with the dot.com bust, and how very different BMC is today.

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Bob Beauchamp, president and CEO of BMC Software, Inc., discusses starting his career and what he admires about entrepreneurs and the new "intrapreneurs" Born in Houston, Bob and his family lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Beaumont, Texas, before moving back to Houston. He shares his very personal journey, from his high school experiences to the scholarship that took him to Stephen F. Austin State University. Although his college degree was in finance, he took to sales very quickly, which awakened his entrepreneurial instincts and shaped his attitudes toward work. Bob believes the future of business is largely on the shoulders of entrepreneurs, whose companies will fuel the bulk of future job growth and whose innovations will change entire industries and the world.

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What is the number one factor that will drive the IT market forward over the next decade? According to the IDC, it is utility computing, also referred to as capacity on demand or the real-time infrastructure. This is an area of IT that will help you control costs while increasing the number and quality of services delivered. In other words, you can dynamically align your resources with the needs of the business. Embracing this type of approach could actually help keep your company's IT department from being outsourced.

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You've probably heard of application software as a service from companies like Salesforce.com or Webex.com, but have you heard that infrastructure software as a service is now moving into the mainstream? We're experiencing the beginning of a fundamental shift in the entire software industry, based upon the changes in the economics of software and the concerns of today's CIO: a critical lack of resources, time, and money. Innovations and improvements in software as a service is creating a sea of change. Jay Gardner, Vice President and General Manager for the On Demand Business Unit at BMC Software and Timothy Chou, author of the book "The End of Software" discuss the changes and prove who is riding the wave.

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Andi Mann, Senior Analyst at Enterprise Management Associates and Kia Behnia, Chief Architect at BMC Software explore how data center managers can derive significant benefits by becoming better at planning and predicting change. The key is to implement best practices from ITIL (the IT Infrastructure Library) and important related technologies like the CMDB to help your organization thrive in a rapidly changing IT-supported business environment.

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Mark Stabler, corporate strategist for BMC Software, talks about the biggest and most important single event in 2006 for BMC customers: BMC UserWorld 2006 in San Francisco. With over 200 break-out sessions available during the regular session, the conference is set to begin on August 28, 2006, with two days of pre-conference tutorials, including ITIL Foundation Certification and a Fast Start for ITIL Implementation.

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Mark Stabler, corporate strategist for BMC Software, truly knows the questions that are on a CIO's mind when it comes to aligning ITIL with their business. But, there are some important questions that the IT organization itself needs to ask. IT must understand why they are important to business, which process is most important and when, and how to construct an infrastructure that maps back to business priorities. These are keys to moving up the IT maturity curve and achieving value creation ... an "activation" of your IT team.

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Tom Bishop, Chief Technology Officer at BMC Software, continues his conversation about Tandem and Tivoli/IBM, people he admires, open source technology, and lessons he has learned in his career ... including how to talk to customers. Another important lesson that has stayed with him is how, and when, to make a decision. When it comes time, you have to take a leadership stand. Make a decision, make it intentionally, and then get on with it, says Tom.

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What does computer dating and BMC Software's Chief Technology Officer have in common? Well, writing code for a computer dating program introduced Tom Bishop to a world of possibilities in programming. At Cornell, he displayed early ambition, deciding on a flexible computer science program that enabled him to study exactly what he wanted. Tom left the Ph.D. program to apply theory in applications to real problems at Bell Labs. His work with voice switches in the telecommunications industry netted him a patent in record time. But he learned hard lessons along the way that still resonate today.

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The configuration management database (CMDB) is one of the most exciting developments in IT in 20 years and has now entered the IT mainstream. This "linking pin" between information and people has a critical connection to ITIL. But, how should you implement it in your organization? Klaas Hofkamp, a consultant with the IBM Information and Technology Management Consulting practice, shares 10 key lessons he's learned over the course of many CMDB implementations.

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Get inside the mind of one of today's great thought leaders in research and development, Israel Gat, Vice President of R&D for Infrastructure Management at BMC Software. Israel discusses the difference between the traditional software development methodology and Scrum, which is being used at BMC to enable rapid software development. This agile approach, combined with a "craftsmanship" mentality, has paid off in more ways than one. What is agentless technology and how will the agile approach help you? Download this conversation now and get the whole story.

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Lori Cook, Vice President of Global Services, Channels and Emerging Markets, is turning up the volume on channels. She tunes into BMC's partners and channel strategy, and queues up what's working, and why. Have you read the recent Forrester report that puts BMC in a leadership position for our Configuration Management Database (CMDB)? Wondering why it's the only viable CMDB in the market today, who coined the term "CMDB" and "BSM," and what in the world are BMC and IBM doing as partners? Lori can set the record straight on these, and more. If you are an industry analyst or BMC partner, you'll want to tune in.

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Now is one of those rare points in time in our industry when a revolutionary change is taking place in new technology. Virtualization is what is driving that change today, says Dave Wagner, solutions management director for Capacity Management and Provisioning at BMC Software. You see, "a perfect storm" is brewing: business units have to do more with less, CFOs question why their IT departments are spending money on hardware they aren't using to capacity, and IT is pushing to buy even more hardware to support business growth. Operating more efficiently is the only way to prevent a disaster from happening ... and virtualization is the critical component you need to do this.

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There are many definitions for virtualization, but the one most commonly agreed upon relates to partitioning a physical server into many virtual servers, says Fred Johannessen, program executive for Capacity Management and Provisioning at BMC Software. But, how important is it, really? Actually, virtualization done right can give your enterprise a competitive advantage. Join us as we explain how ...

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"How do I keep my job?" In this Brave New Tech World of outsourcing and offshoring, we've all either heard that question, asked it out loud, or thought of it. Author, IMS expert, and corporate strategist Peter Armstrong hears that a lot from IT professionals, including DBAs. And the quick answer he gives to them is, "learn how to talk without talking tech."

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When you hear the word "audit," do you shudder? Have no fear, says Rami Elron, Senior System Architect with the Identity Management business unit at BMC Software. This isn't the IRS. Identity Management audit helps you stay in control of the different identity records that relate to users and is necessary if you want to stay ahead of regulatory compliance requirements. Today, auditing plays a key role in IT management duties.

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You've heard about Identity Management, but what about federated IdM? There are some major benefits, and Steve Anderson, product architect with BMC Software, discusses the three biggest, impact on the user experience, cost reduction, and security. Want to know more?

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Identity information can be found all over organizations today, says Cindy Sterling, Director at BMC's Identity Management business unit. Why should you care? Well, this labor-intensive and disconnected information leaves most organizations struggling with IdM inefficiencies. Keep it simple and focus on four key areas: Who are all of the users that touch the IT resources, what do they have access to, how did they receive this access, and what is their behavior? Once these questions are answered and you link and visualize the data, your company will realize immediate IT benefits, and can empower end users and business owners.

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Mark Stabler owns two BlackBerrys, two laptops, has a third cell phone (just in case), an iPod On the Go, an HP Ipaq 2, and he outfits his home with wireless media servers ... all this so he can ensure that he is available 24x7 and can hit the world running at the quickest pace possible. In this podcast, Mark talks about technology and developing countries, the idea of IT "backsourcing," how technology is continuing to "flatten" the world of business competition, and generally, how an enterprise can get IT right.

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What is the CMDB? The configuration management database is that necessary component that will soon be in all enterprises of any significant size, according to Kia Behnia, Chief Architect for BMC software, Inc. In this podcast, Behnia discusses the genesis of the CMDB, which revolves around change and configuration management and ITIL best practices. The CMDB, he says, is the "single source of truth" for IT data and processes. It provides an elegant mechanism for tracking changes required for compliance and auditing. And, it connects people to various systems and services being used in the enterprise.

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What's really in the mind of a CTO? Part of a series of podcasts called "In the Mind of a CTO" brought to you by BMC Software, Inc., this one focuses on Mark Vorholt, Chief Technology Officer for DBADirect, a BMC Solutions Partner. This CTO shares his views about where we could use more technology in our daily life, the possibility of reversing IT outsourcing on a global scale, and how companies can stay relevant in an increasingly "flat" world.

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Is the idea of a Configuration Management Database (CMDB) just a lot of marketing hype, or is this the real deal? IT teams work in very complex environments and most already have asset management systems in place. How is implementing a CMDB any different? Jonathan Markworth of CompuCom Systems helps you understand a CMDB at a very basic level, then takes you on a value journey through implementation and return on investment.

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If you're even thinking of implementing a Configuration Management Database (CMDB), this is one podcast you HAVE to hear. Most IT professionals shudder when they think about the potential cost and complexity of a CMDB implementation. Yet, if you are part of virtually any enterprise IT environment, the CMDB is something you can't ignore. David Savino of Column Technologies breaks it down for you into manageable pieces.

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You've barely heard of Web 2.0, but what comes next? BMC Software's Herb VanHook peers into the future, and gives us a taste of what is to come. After you listen to this podcast, you'll be able to understand how words like "Service," "Federated," and "Intermediation" are at the crux of a whole, new application architecture model that can't be ignored. Composite applications are changing everything in the top layers of the technology stack, and business requirements are being translated into executable code faster than ever before. Service-oriented architecture is the wave of the future, implemented with a set of Web services that are a valuable asset, in and of themselves. The key is a holistic approach to management. And, it helps to have a crystal ball.

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In the Mind of the CTO Podcast Series. Does CTO stand for "Chief Technology Officer" or "Chief Toy Officer"? Well, maybe a bit of both, if the title applies to BMC Software's Kia Behnia. This tech trendwatcher discusses his latest passion for a gadget that he says offers the truest convergence so far of messaging device, phone, and connectivity apps; Apple Computer's "birthright" as the livingroom media center; GOOGLE as dominant OS; and more. Join Ynema Mangum for a conversation with this farsighted CTO, who values cutting-edge gadgets as well as espresso made slowly and with care, the old-fashioned way; who knows how to savor the pleasures of both high, and low-tech.

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Today, doing business nationally and internationally has never been easier. But given the number of regulations and requirements to which companies are required to comply, doing business nationally and internationally has never been more complex, either. Mandates such as Basel II in Europe or Sarbanes-Oxley in the U.S. are complex, labor-intensive, and ultimately, very expensive for your business to navigate. In this podcast, BMC Software's Chris Williams explains the issues and challenges posed by today's highly regulated corporate environment, and how BMC's software solutions can help.

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When was the last time you heard the words "practical" and "simplified" associated with deploying an enterprise identity management solution, particularly for a Microsoft platform? Now, BMC's Identity Platform for .solution can leverage your own expense and experience around using Microsoft infrastructure technology to achieve efficient identity management along with a whole set of Web-based self-service applications built around password management, requests for application access, and more. And by utilizing this solution along with its Magic Service Desk implementation, you'll have a solution that can provide an end-to-end Identity Management platform that supports multiple user types, applications, and cross-platform environments.

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When Peter Armstrong, BMC Software's corporate strategist and mover-and-shaker, talks about BSM, BMC's hot new approach to realizing real value from IT organizations, he uses terms like "deliberate," "step-by-step," and "mapping out the steps" to implementing BSM -- hardly a rapid-fire methodology. But according to Armstrong, this is the only way to get from where you are in IT maturity to where you want to be. BSM is a strategy that is saving millions for companies today, and that's already adapting to the IT environment of the future. And even though it starts with a vision -- your vision -- for the IT organization, it is achieved the old fashioned way: pragmatically, deliberately, realistically. To hear more about BSM, today and tomorrow, tune in to a lively conversation with one of BMC's brightest visionaries, Peter Armstrong.

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It's 11 a.m., one of your critical IT systems is really, really slow, you filled out a trouble ticket an hour ago, but nothing has changed yet do you know where your Help Desk is? Chances are, they are frantically handling the many other calls and trouble tickets coming in to them about this problem and others. There are just too many calls coming in about too many complex situations; they can't respond to them all efficiently or effectively. But if Tom Drain, senior Solution Marketing Manager for Incident and Problem Management and Service Level Management, has been asked to help solve the Help Desk's problem, he believes he has the right tools to help.

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John Bostick, president and CEO of dbaDirect, data infrastructure management (Data IM) services, wants you to know that there's a difference between "outsourcing" the data management part of your business and using a data infrastructure management (Data IM) service. "Do you look at hiring a babysitter for your kids as "outsourcing"? Do you look at bringing in a cleaning service for your company as "outsourcing"?" asks Bostick. "No -- these individuals and companies are business service providers. This is not just semantics -- it's a subtle, but critical, distinction that can make a lot of difference for your business.

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BMC Software's CTO Tom Bishop is part of that tribe of people called Techies -- those folks who carry on a love affair with great coffee; work in front of a computer all day, go home at night, and turn on their computers; and are not particularly WOWed when inventions like cellphones emerge, because chances are, they've already envisioned them. And always, always, they are thinking, dreaming, about what will be The Next Cool Thing. In this podcast, Bishop explores some of the hottest topics in tech today, from what will Oracle CEO Larry Ellison do next, to how will the video iPod change the world, to what he thinks about the latest GOOGLE/Sun Microsystems announcement (and what he'd hoped they'd say). He even wonders aloud about the Disneyworld, or Brave New World, that the present Internet infrastructure will usher in ... and he invites the listener to think, and to dream, along with him.

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In today's world of multiple corporate information silos, employees who may come and go, partners and customers who want access to company information, and complex compliance requirements, identity management is a critical piece of managing your IT infrastructure. BMC Software's Somesh Singh, a seasoned IT executive himself, is well aware of the issues modern businesses face, and can provide a cost-effective solution. Want to hear more? Tune in to this podcast with Somesh Singh, and find out how you can align your IT resources with your business securely and efficiently.

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Probably no one in business today (or, in today's business of IT) would disagree that there've been fundamental changes in tech since the heyday of the 1990s. Now, even traditional beliefs about how technology itself resides and is delivered in an organization are being challenged. One of the new concepts currently gathering steam and fanbase is the idea of purchasing a package of software and services uniquely tailored to answer your critical business need, without longterm licensing commitments or immense implementation projects. In this conversation with Tom Parish, Jay Gardner talks candidly about the market forces behind the new "software as a service" model, what are "routes to value," and how offering software as a service is changing the way many traditional IT organizations do business today.

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After the chill (if not deep freeze) in tech innovation post-Y2K and the dot.com bubble, there's not just a thaw, but an explosion of new technologies and ideas, from blogs to WIKI to IM. And there's a new take on an old idea in IT today, managed services. Tune in to this conversation with BMC Software's Chris Johnson and find out about what "managed services" means, and what it could mean for your business.

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If you know about the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), you know that the heart of matter is really the Configuration Management Database, or CMDB. In this podcast with Tom Bishop, the plain-spoken CTO for BMC Software, you'll learn about BMC's CMDB, called "Atrium," arguably the crown jewel in the company's highly successful Business Service Management (BSM) strategy for IT. And if you have an eye for the elegantly simple BSM strategy, which urges businesses to get a clear picture of what they want to achieve for sucess first, then implement the applications and systems they'll need to get that result, you'll want to learn about the CMDB as well.

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In a business environment that's highly competitive, demands speed and agility, and is unforgiving of "stumbles" like an hour of downtime, it's too easy to get caught up in buying lots and lots of the latest technologies, like virtualization, then expecting instant returns on that investment. But that can be an expensive trap; one that BMC Software's Dave Wagner has seen plenty of businesses fall into.

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The discipline of ITIL in your IT shop helps you avoid potential pitfalls like change management with processes that are both methodical and intelligent. But Business Service Management is arguably a much more powerful tool for leveraging technology along with people and processes to deliver superior IT value. BSM is the vision of absolutely aligning the services that IT provides with the companyís business goals ñ and providing the means to do this.

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From mainframe programmer to data systems manager to independent film producer to entrepreneur, Nick Pachnos seems to have taken the long road to reach his current career in sales and marketing for BMC Software. But along the way, he gathered a lot of experience, a lot of customer feedback, and a lot of passion for the focus of his current activities at BMC: Business Service Management.

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In talking with Peter Armstrong, it becomes clear that he is a guy with a passion for two things: his work for BMC Software as a corporate strategist, and golf. In his work life, he travels the world, speaking to customers, troubleshooting issues with their enterprises, and advising how best to implement a new practice that BMC is introducing into the IT marketplace lately, Business Service Management, or BSM. As this approach is something of a sea change for business people seeking to optimize IT, Peter finds that explaining the nuts and bolts of BSM might be difficult without using a metaphor that makes it easier for listeners to grasp. So he came up with a way to combine his two great passions into one unique story about how BSM can help businesses achieve the kind of cost-savings and efficiency everybody dreams of: so, Golf and the Practice of BSM was born.

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The software needs of Small and Mid-sized Businesses (SMBs) are important because of two reasons: 1. worldwide, the number of SMBs dwarfs the number of enterprise-sized businesses today and 2. SMBs are investing money in IT at a rate that is three times faster than are enterprises. Carlos Hidalgo says "what SMBs need today are solutions that are highly reliable, because an SMB cannot withstand a hit to its IT backbone the way a corporation might. They need software that is simple, easy to install, and is out-of-the-box, created specifically to address their needs, not just scaled-down versions of enterprise software."

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Getting The Big Picture of your IT infrastructure is not easy, given all the various silos of data that accumulate in any business. But that picture becomes a lot clearer using a CMDB, and this improved view can help you make better business decisions, based on what is best for the business, not just for IT. Today, IT cannot be an island apart from the business it supports. Viewing IT's assets in their business context adds value to the organization and value to the business.

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In this interview, Ken Turbitt relates some of the real-world scenarios he has encountered while helping businesses that want to use the ITIL - the joys and the pitfalls. ITIL may just be about doing what everyone seems to agree should be done, says Turbitt; yet, putting it to work requires discipline, deliberation, and having the patience to look at the big picture of business goals and IT, together.

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During his 20 years in IT, Simon Teager has seen a lot of ideas come and go ... but one idea has attracted a lot of interest this year, and, it seems to him, it may just have real staying power. It's the concept that IT should be run like a business, and that the business of IT is to support the company. In other words, IT can't be an isolated island of hardware, software, and personnel anymore. And it's no longer good enough to just buy X tool to manage a database, or Y tool to manage the infrastructure. Successful CIOs should be thinking about an integrated solution that helps IT manage all of its functions in alignment with business objectives. The more integrated the solution, the more efficient the operation, and the more services and demonstratable value IT can deliver for its company.

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Today's decentralized systems pose new security issues, with their multiple access points and data storage repositories. Now, employees, vendors, and even customers around the world need access to data, and the corporation needs more safegaurds to manage that access. Add to this the threat of identity theft and hacking; and, then, of course, there's Sarbanes-Oxley and global privacy rules: You have a complex and costly soup of security requirements and privacy issues. Identity Management steamlines compliance with today's corporate and government regulations, ensures the integrity of valuable data, and safegaurds individuals' privacy, efficiently and cost-effectively. In this podcast, Tom Parish and BMC Software's Chris Williams explore the issues and challenges posed by today's corporate identify management.

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