Press release:

CUSTOMER WIN: Global Shipping Company Dramatically Improves Operational Visibility and Management with BMC Software

ZIM implements Business Service Management to increase availability of business services and cut issue resolution time

JERUSALEM, Aug. 21, 2012 – ZIM Integrated Shipping Services Ltd., one of the world’s largest container shipping companies, has selected BMC Software (NASDAQ: BMC) to implement a comprehensive Business Service Management (BSM) platform, including a new command and control center complete with IT service management (ITSM) and automation capabilities.

ZIM services a global market that includes ports-of-call in more than 120 countries.  The company’s business requires 24/7 IT support and comprehensive monitoring capabilities to track its various shipping solutions.  However, ZIM’s legacy IT platform was dated, disparate, and frequently unable to manage its operational requirements.

This previous inefficiency led ZIM to realize it needed an uninterrupted, consolidated IT management solution to support its growing customer base and business needs.  The company conducted a thorough review of competitive offerings and chose BMC.

“We selected BMC’s Business Service Management platform as part of our strategy to improve service to our users, ensure business continuity and consolidate our IT centers globally,” said David Avni, chief information officer at ZIM. “I am confident that BMC’s commitment to the project, combined with the professional work of the BMC and Matrix consultancy teams, will ensure we meet the challenges according to the aggressive deadlines we have set."

The Challenge

Working with an antiquated IT platform, ZIM was unable to manage its IT needs to meet the demands of its growing business. Managing service to over 120 countries required increased availability of business services, a complete, consolidated view into IT services and faster problem resolution – all from one, unified platform. 

The Solution

Harnessing the benefits of BMC’s complementary solutions, ZIM selected BMC’s BSM platform over various other solutions to effectively manage and schedule its business processes.  Matrix, the leading information technology company in Israel and a strategic partner to BMC, is assisting with the implementation.

Benefits

Using BMC’s BSM solution, ZIM looks forward to:

• Improved real-time visibility into the impact of performance and availability issues across its global operations
• The ability to manage and monitor the effects of operational change and its global shipping assets
• Increased operational efficiency and productivity by automating certain tasks across applications, consoles, audits, logins and data centers

“These solutions will offer a rich, comprehensive set of productivity tools for managing and scheduling business processes,” said Yigal Shachak, BMC divisional manager at Matrix.  “Matrix is proud to partner with BMC to provide support and training to ZIM. This implementation will have significant business impact on ZIM by providing a more customized, efficient technology platform to manage its global IT infrastructure."

ZIM’s BSM platform includes:

• BMC ProactiveNet Performance Management Suite
• BMC BladeLogic Server Automation
• BMC Atrium CMDB
• BMC Atrium Orchestrator
• BMC Control-M Workload Automation
• BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite

For more information about BMC, please visit:

• Follow @bmcsoftware, @ITSM_Guy 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 20,000 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.

Press release:

CUSTOMER SUCCESS: PEMEX Taps Into Deep Well of Business Value with BMC Business Service Management Platform

Global oil giant works with BMC to drive unprecedented service delivery and customer satisfaction

HOUSTON, Aug. 7, 2012 – Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) is the largest company in Mexico and Latin America. Providing superior products and services to customers is the oil giant’s top priority.

When Abraham Galan became chief information officer at PEMEX, however, he discovered that the company operated a highly disparate IT system that managed more than 1,000 IT applications and multiple data centers. Galan quickly saw that IT was inhibiting PEMEX’s ability to maintain and scale a wide array of services, negatively impacting customers, partners and employees.

To connect and standardize its infrastructure, applications and processes, Galan and PEMEX did not hesitate to make sweeping changes, implementing BMC Software’s (NASDAQ: BMC) Business Service Management (BSM) platform.

Prior to switching its IT management to the BMC platform, PEMEX had tried almost every tool available in the market. Each had proven unproductive and inefficient, as none were able to deliver common IT processes for PEMEX, much less a cohesive IT services strategy. Major changes in the business provided Galan with an unprecedented opportunity to connect the dots between PEMEX’s IT infrastructure, applications and processes and BMC solutions paved the way. 

“I would definitely recommend BMC Software products because they deliver an integrated view [of IT management],” said Galan. “Looking ahead, BMC remains the best choice, not only for monitoring PEMEX IT services and processes, but also to configure the rest of our business processes. IT will continue to drive PEMEX’s growth. The capabilities that BMC delivers are absolutely key to that success.”

The Challenge

A disparate and disconnected IT infrastructure created an environment that was inefficient and increasingly difficult to manage. This meant IT employees spent too much time researching and determining the root cause of problems and not enough time on business-critical work.

The Solution

The company needed to implement a solution for IT that would deliver a complete picture of its IT infrastructure. PEMEX chose BMC’s Business Service Management platform because of the company’s ability to deliver a comprehensive and integrated IT management view that also mapped back to business processes. BMC solutions offered PEMEX the opportunity to achieve application and infrastructure consolidation, as well as IT standardization.

Benefits

In choosing BMC as a technology partner, PEMEX has been able to view its value chain, not just in terms of IT services, but also in terms of its business processes. To date, PEMEX has experienced significant benefits including:

• Improved levels of customer service
• Better visibility into overall work flows and processes
• Improved resource management

For more information on PEMEX’s implementation and BMC solutions, please visit:

• Watch the full video here
• Learn more about Business Service Management
• 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 20,000 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.

University of Hong Kong Aligns IT Infrastructure Library® (ITIL®) Best Practices with BMC’s Remedy ITSM Suite

Note to Visitors: We have moved!  For current news and information, please visit our successor blogs at:  http://JBK-BizTech.blogspot.com and http://JBK-Current-Events.blogspot.com.  Thank you.

University of Hong Kong Aligns IT Infrastructure Library® (ITIL®) Best Practices with BMC’s Remedy ITSM Suite

First tertiary institution in Hong Kong to implement full scale ITIL adoption using BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite

HONG KONG, March 28, 2012 – BMC Software (NASDAQ: BMC), the recognized leader in Business Service Management (BSM), today announced the University of Hong Kong, the first tertiary institution in Hong Kong, has automated its incident, problem, knowledge and request fulfillment management processes with BMC Software’s Remedy IT Service Management Suite. The university has experienced better user satisfaction through self-service solutions that have increased operational efficiency and improved customer service quality. Additionally, the university has anticipated better IT incident response and resolution time, improved performance against Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) and reduced overall operational costs.

Previously, the University of Hong Kong utilized an in-house developed IT help desk that only provided basic functionality. As the university grew to more than 28,000 staff and students, the IT team struggled with the lack of an industry standard framework to cope with the complexities of supporting such a large organization. To address this issue, the University of Hong Kong sought a new automated solution from BMC Software, which could provide out-of-the-box ITIL®workflow automation to achieve greater process efficiency, effectively manage costs, achieve compliance and deliver superior service quality to its users.

“We selected the BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite because of its superior combination of functionalities and price points,” said Geoffrey Dengate, director, Information Technology Services, the University of Hong Kong. “We immediately saw more standardization in our IT processes. For example, the improved support for a comprehensive range of ITIL processes and functions has enabled us to deliver better support for our staff and students in terms of IT incident management, as well as provided better visibility into our operational priorities. As an educational institution with a vision of providing the best in information and communication technology for teaching, learning, research and administration, we cannot compromise on quality, and BMC will continue to partner with us on this journey.”

The BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite helped automate the university’s service management processes – from incident and configuration to change management - and assisted in pursuing its business goal of streamlining and enhancing IT service quality in supporting research and education. The implementation is planned as a four-phase migration of the university’s core service management processes. The second phase, which includes change and configuration management, has just been completed. Adopting a phased approach has resulted in seamless integration with minimized IT downtime and better visibility into incidents and issues while enabling sufficient time to refine processes to match its unique operational needs.  In phase three and four, asset, lifecycle management and cloud computing will be assessed. 

“As tertiary institutions move more of their curriculum online, large amounts of data are constantly moving through the system on a daily basis. Management of this information is critical and a robust, easy-to-manage IT infrastructure becomes even more important to business operations,” said Steve Su, country manager, greater China region, BMC Software. “The BMC Remedy IT Service Management Suite automates core IT processes and ensures security and stability while lowering costs. As a result, the University of Hong Kong has benefited from business-aligned IT service management and a better learning experience for staff and students.”

While BMC Software’s implementation was in progress, the university organized an ITILFoundation Training and Certification Program for its entire professional, administrative and clerical staff to provide a better understanding of the ITIL concepts and language. As a result of this training program, the university was awarded the Best Professional Development (ICT Professional) Gold Award and the Best Professional Development Grand Award at the prestigious 2011 Hong Kong Information and Communications Technology Awards.

For more information about BMC and its IT Service Management Suite, please visit:

• BMC Remedy IT Service Management
• Follow BMC on Twitter

News Release from BMC Software - Hospital Increases Efficiencies

BMC Software Enables Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital to Increase Operational Efficiencies by 50 percent

The BMC Control-M Workload Automation solution enables Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital to manage big data critical to patient security and hospital processes from a single point of control

TAIPEI, Taiwan, March 13, 2012 – Kaohsiung Veterans General Hospital (VGHKS), the first and only public medical center in South Taiwan, is consolidating the management of its scheduled processing on all applications and platforms across the entire hospital with the BMC Control-M Workload Automation solution. This solution from BMC Software (NASDAQ: BMC, the recognized leader in Business Service Management (BSM), has resulted in a 50 percent improvement in operational and manpower efficiencies.

 

BMC is successfully expanding its footprint in the medical service sector in Taiwan, and its relationship with VGHKS exemplifieshow medical centers and hospitals are deriving benefits from BMC solutions. These solutions help ensure efficient and safe execution of thousands of complex scheduled jobs every day as well as management of huge amounts of data connected by complex relationships in the ecosystem of medical services environments.

 

"After a rigorous evaluation process, we selected BMC Control-M as our new enterprise-level scheduling solution," said Shou Cheng Xiong, leader of Information Department at VGHKS. “By integrating and automating business processes and managing them from a single point of control, the platform provides a dynamic workload management solution that works across different systems and applications for the entire hospital now.”

 

Established in 1990, VGHKS has won public praise and recognition over the past two decades. However, its continuous growth, and the fact that it is the only public hospital in Southern Taiwan has also given rise to new challenges to the hospital’s IT system. Its IT team has had to manage an immensity of data and complexity of workflow processes that need access to statistics about the hospital, patients, daily revenues from all departments, changes in surgery priorities and duty shifts for more than 580 doctors and over 1,700 nurses and staff, and even specific details on particular diseases.

 

Facing increasing pressure to deliver faster and error-free IT performance, the VGHKS IT team’s most crucial problem was that its existing management system was unable to integrate with the mainframe host. This was because 80 to 90 percent of the hospital’s data is stored on the mainframe, while the applications run on the hospital’s open systems*. It could not seamlessly operate with those open systems on which all the applications were running. To solve the challenge, VGHKS sought a new automated solution from BMC, which minimized risk, eliminated delays between jobs, and integrated with the hospital’s existing IT infrastructure.

 

The BMC Control-M Workload Automation solution is now enabling the mainframe host of VGHKS to communicate with each of its open systems perfectly, integrating the management of critical scheduling processes from a single point of control, as well as eliminating errors in a simplified and automated manner. This in turn results in significant time saving by shortening the scheduled workload processing time by up to 50 percent.

 

Moreover, the BMC Control-M Workload Automation solution allows users to integrate their service level agreement (SLA) benchmarks to scheduled workloads in a single window from both business and technological perspectives. With the solution’s centralized GUI, the easy-to-use and intuitive interface does not require knowledge on mainframe or Time Sharing Option (TSO) mastery. As a result, manpower efficiency has improved by 50 percent and training time and costs related to IT staff have been reduced.

 

“In the medical industry, a huge amount of patient data and diagnostic statistics are transmitted every single day. This information is needed by processes that must be carried out at any time, making a robust and easy-to-manage IT infrastructure extraordinarily important,” said John Cheng, regional director of Mainframe Service Management, BMC Greater China. “BMC Control-M secures and executes data across mainframe and distributed environments, automates job scheduling and ensures security and stability while lowering cost. For VGHKS the benefits are clear: greater efficiency and productivity, reduced risk and a better quality experience for staff and patients alike.”

 

The implementation of the BMC Control-M Workload Automation solution only took six months to go live across the entire enterprise of VGHKS and it is performing flawlessly in a hybrid environment now. By unifying system operations and management across different systems and applications, the solution has helped VGHKS see the potential of further optimizing its IT system in the future, allowing IT to dynamically manage workloads to match ever-changing business priorities. This ensures that business needs are met – regardless of how complex or unpredictable they may be.

 

Read the full case study here.

News Release from BMC - Remedyforce Release

Latest BMC Remedyforce Release Prepares IT to Tackle Contemporary Challenges

BMC and salesforce.com deliver new capabilities to the social enterprise through Remedyforce; Dell expands reach of Remedyforce to small and mid-market businesses

HOUSTON, Feb. 27, 2012 – BMC Software (NASDAQ: BMC), the leader in Business Service Management (BSM), today announced the availability of the winter release of its cloud-based Remedyforce Service Desk solution, which includes innovative new capabilities for service request management and the integration of social media and external sources into a truly modern knowledge management system. Both additions provide even higher levels of productivity for end users, improving customer satisfaction and providing significant gains in efficiency for IT. 

Additionally, an expanded reseller partnership with Dell provides greater access to the BMC Remedyforce Service Desk solution to small and mid-market organizations.

“These new capabilities can help to modernize IT support so we are ready to not only meet the challenges of today, but also tomorrow,” said Ervin Sala, director of IT Operations, Saveology. “Remedyforce has long provided us with exceptional service and we expect these capabilities will substantively benefit our IT service management approach.”

The BMC Remedyforce Service Desk solution is at the forefront of helping IT harness the “consumerization of IT” phenomenon. The advent of social media has made communication between individuals and groups instantaneous, collaborative and continuous, driving an expectation that all departments, including IT, interact with equal speed and agility. Through the capabilities of Salesforce Chatter, the leading enterprise social network, the BMC Remedyforce Service Desk solution makes it easier for IT professionals to interact with each other, ultimately benefitting the end user. Furthermore, new functionality enables Chatter feeds and other sources to be archived in the solution’s knowledge management system, providing unprecedented access to information.  

Developments and expectations in the market create new challenges for IT support teams and new requirements for IT service management systems. The BMC Remedyforce Service Desk solution represents a cost-effective, contemporary and best-practice driven solution to the challenges of delivering high quality service support at optimal cost. Service request management empowers end users through a self-service interface – maximizing responsiveness, quality and efficiency. The new knowledge management system delivers capabilities, which bring in social media and other external content, to unlock the latent knowledge spread across multiple repositories and Chatter. These new capabilities can be expected to further drive down the cost and increase the efficiency of service desk operations for organizations.

“Remedyforce is helping IT departments achieve greater success in the world of the social enterprise with the power of Chatter and Force.com,” said Ron Huddleston, senior vice president, ISV & Channel, salesforce.com. “The latest version of Remedyforce is evidence of BMC and salesforce.com’s mutual commitment to revolutionize IT service management.”

The BMC Remedyforce Service Desk solution leverages the Force.com, salesforce.com’s social enterprise platform for building employee facing social apps, to deliver the performance, reliability and scalability of the industry’s leading cloud platform, as well as the ability for BMC developers to quickly extend the functionality in BMC Remedyforce.

“Customer recommendations are critically important to the ongoing development of Remedyforce. We’ve been able to innovate on customer feedback and requests in record time thanks to the responsiveness of our teams and the flexibility of salesforce.com’s Force.com platform,” said Marc Ferrentino, CTO of SaaS, BMC. “Remedyforce is a smart, strategic investment for organizations in changing times as it has a growing partner ecosystem and rich product roadmap, which has been bolstered by our recent acquisition of Numara, further accelerating the growth of our SaaS business.”

Dell is now including the BMC Remedyforce Service Desk solution in its IT management portfolio. This will increase the reach of BMC Remedyforce in small and mid-sized organizations, arming them with a new level of IT support that will help them modernize operations.