BMC: Reaching the next level - moving from IT to Business Service Management

Some days ago I had a briefing with BMC Software on their new MyIT offering. MyIT is a self-service approach that enables end users to request services. It focuses on the user experience and tries to close the gap between the IT-centric view of services and the view business users have.

This aligns well with two areas of KuppingerCole research:

• One is the Future IT Paradigm by KuppingerCole, our definition of how we expect and recommend that IT organizations change in order to be able to deal with the changes in IT itself – the change from on-premise IT to hybrid models and an increasing portion of Cloud Computing and the overall influence of the Computing Troika (Cloud, Mobile, Social Computing).
• The other is what we call Assignment Management, i.e. an approach that allows managing not only access rights (as in Access Governance) but all types of assignments, including physical devices and flexible service requests for users.

We have various publications out on both of these topics. The Future IT Paradigm is covered extensively in the KuppingerCole report “Scenario: Understanding IT Service and Security Management”. The model described therein, now called the “Future IT Paradigm”, splits IT into three levels, with business service management on top, the management of services, information and security in the middle, and IT service production at the bottom. BMC MyIT fits well to the upper layer in this model. Another document worth reading when looking at that model is the KuppingerCole report “Scenario: The Future of IT Organizations”. That document describes how IT organizations have to adapt to the fundamental changes I have listed above.

The second area, Assignment Management, is covered in a whitepaper I wrote a while ago in which I outline the basic concept. It also is one of the investment areas for CIOs we have identified in our CIO GPS.

As mentioned, BMC MyIT aligns well with these concepts, by moving IT closer to the user. Instead of relying on IT-centric Service Catalogs and, in general, an IT-centric view, it is about translating this view into a user-centric perspective and making it accessible for everyday use by all users in a simple way.

BMC seems to push this strategic approach. Yesterday they announced BMC AppZone, based on an acquired technology, through the purchase of Partnerpedia. That allows companies to implement company app stores that again can be integrated with BMC MyIT. Such a move, i.e. allowing users to shop for apps when looking for IT services as a business user, is just so logical you wonder why it has been so long it reaching reality.

It will be interesting to see how BMC further executes on their strategy around AppZone and MyIT. I see a massive potential for both upselling to their existing customers (and leveraging existing investments) and approaching new customers. The biggest challenge as of now is that while the solution is designed to be ITSM agnostic, the standard integration of MyIT is currently limited to existing BMC backend infrastructure. Providing more standard integrations and simple, flexible interfaces for integration will be the critical success factor. If BMC solves that, this might enable them to be not only an IT Service Management, but also a Business Service Management leader.