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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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."

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

?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.

Listen Now:

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

Listen Now:

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

Listen Now:

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

Listen Now:

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

Listen Now:

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

Listen Now:

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

Listen Now:

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

Listen Now:

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".

Listen Now:

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

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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?

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now:

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.

Listen Now: