SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 9, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- BMC Software (Nasdaq:BMC) today delivered major updates to its IT Service Management portfolio that enable organizations to transform their service desk into a flexible, proactive "genius bar" experience.
As a result of BMC's transformative new approach to IT service delivery, IT organizations can transition quickly from a passive, infrastructure-oriented "support" function to one that delivers proactive, personalized enablement to today's highly mobile workforce.
Unlike other vendors' one-size-fits-all approach, BMC offers four major ITSM products to meet every customers unique business need. The updated portfolio provides both on-premise and on-demand offerings, and includes BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite 8.0, BMC FootPrints 11.5, BMC Remedyforce Service Desk, and BMC Track-It!. Each product includes major new social, mobile and cloud capabilities, as well as access to powerful new service analytics. These capabilities help IT organizations deliver a dramatically more satisfying experience to employees, while increasing IT productivity and lowering costs.
Kia Behnia, BMC's chief technology officer, said: "Enterprise IT organizations and service providers want to deliver a differentiated, modern service experience. Employees have become far more sophisticated regarding their expectations of IT – they want the 'genius bar' service experience everywhere they go, not just in their personal lives. They want immediate access to the IT services they need, across the channels of productivity they prefer, on any device, regardless of their location or the time of day.
"With these new ITSM releases, BMC has harnessed the power of social, mobile, analytics and cloud to leap over the heads of our competitors," Behnia said. "We are revolutionizing the service desk experience, and there is more to come."
Technology Advances, Cultural Shifts Driving New Service Expectations
For years, IT service delivery has been industrialized and policy driven, an approach dictated more by a desire for standardization and governance than responsiveness to an employee's needs. Employee frustration with IT service delivery was so ubiquitous that cartoons like Dilbert™ regularly profiled the issues. A new generation of IT consumers have upended old models, creating expectations that IT organizations must be able to satisfy if their companies are to remain competitive.
Jarod Greene, senior research analyst at Gartner, said: "The megatrends around mobility, 'bring your own device' (BYOD), social interaction, information and the cloud are driving the consumerization and democratization of IT, which will provide flexibility and functionality – shifting command and control from IT to the business user. IT organizations that are prepared to embrace these trends have an opportunity to significantly impact their businesses through promoting productivity by enabling user self-sufficiency, and by leveraging existing IT capabilities to improve business efficiencies and capabilities."
As "IT Friction" Hammers Productivity, People Want a Solution Now
As these megatrends took hold, a new concept emerged – the idea of "IT friction," which accounted for the productivity they had lost due to the failure of enterprise IT to deliver flexible, powerful services when, where and how they were needed.
At the same time, CIOs began to see employees' new expectations exacerbate "IT friction," causing costs to spiral dramatically upwards, particularly in terms of the volume of service desk calls and cost in time and money to resolve them. Both employees and IT organizations were increasingly dissatisfied with the status quo. The stage was set for a new social contract around IT service delivery that would free them both from old ways and old frustrations.
"In a nutshell, what happened is this: consumer IT went mainstream and now it has transitioned to mobile," said Joe Pucciarelli, vice president and IT executive advisor at leading analyst firm IDC. "Many people began to have a whole new set of expectations concerning what IT was and what it can do for them. In their private lives, they experienced almost unlimited access to personalized information, technology and tools that made them more social, more productive, and more innovative than ever before. But as soon as they went to work, their experience with IT took on a decidedly different complexion – with many more obstacles. We're at the tipping point now where frustration with traditional 'corporate' IT is becoming a mainstream idea – a phenomenon IDC calls 'IT friction'. To meet these rising expectations, IDC believes IT suppliers will need a broad new approach to support these operational changes."
What Customers are Saying
- "BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite 8.0 continues to be a central component of the unified business service management strategy for enterprise customers, with a wealth of integration opportunities which increase the value of existing investments in the BMC Software suite," said Steve Upton, CEO for Alderstone Consulting. "This latest release demonstrates BMC's ongoing engagement with, and understanding of, the needs of the Remedy community."
- "The flexibility and choice that the BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite provides enabled ConAgra to move from an on-premise environment to a Software-as-a-Service environment," Michael Tomasiewicz, senior system and network administrator for ConAgra Foods. "Our migration to BMC Remedy OnDemand aligns with our IT objectives, and provides us a powerful, cost-effective and easy-to-use service management solution."
- "Previously, any help desk issue that needed resolution was sent to the IT department from the support technicians' desks, resulting in lengthy delays and an overall loss in productivity," said Mike Campbell, BMC Remedy implementation manager at Dev Technology Group. "By upgrading to BMC's secure, mobile ITSM solution, we've seen Federal customers increase their IT efficiency and process agility. This enables them to achieve their mission, which is to serve and protect the nation."
- "By implementing BMC FootPrints, we help drive technology adoption and raised the bar for companies within our industry," said Dean Barry, CIO at Cast & Crew. "With a better handle on administrative processes, the IT organization makes more proactive decisions, automates many functions and ensures the business runs smoother overall. Efficiencies allow Cast & Crew to focus more time on innovation initiatives to gain ground on our competitors."
- "Because the BMC Remedyforce Service Desk is web-based, everybody can access it. It's great," said Danielle Bailey IT manager at Comverge. "The end-users say that Remedyforce is a lot easier for them to use and to share with others. We have been able to show where IT is actually starting to save money by increasing efficiency and productivity."
- "Our experience deploying BMC Track-It! was seamless," said Monique Sendze, associate director of information technology at Douglas County Libraries. "We consistently receive stellar support from BMC, and this, along with price point, ease of use and administration, as well as the software's unique features, makes the solution stand apart from all competitive offerings."
For more information about BMC, visit the following resources:
- Fact Sheet: BMC IT Service Management Product Portfolio
- Read a white paper titled, "Keeping Users Happy & Productive By Tearing Down the Walls Between Operations and Support"
- Access the BMC ITSM Customer Community
- Access the blog On the Mark
- Access the BMC ITSM blog
- Access BMC Global Services
- Follow @bmcsoftware on Twitter
- Become a fan of BMC on Facebook
Business Runs on IT. IT Runs on BMC Software.
Business runs better when IT runs at its best. That's why more than 50,000 IT organizations – from the Global 100 to the smallest businesses – in over 120 countries rely on BMC Software (Nasdaq:BMC) to manage their business services and applications across distributed, mainframe, virtual and cloud environments. With the leading Business Service Management platform, Cloud Management, and the industry's broadest choice of IT management solutions, BMC helps customers cut costs, reduce risk and achieve business objectives. For the four fiscal quarters ended June 30, 2012, BMC revenue was approximately $2.2 billion.
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