As we advance through 2024, IT service management (ITSM) remains a pivotal cornerstone for organizations aiming to streamline their services and manage IT operations more effectively. With approximately 48 percent of organizations rating their ITSM capabilities as “great” or “good,” there’s a burgeoning confidence in current ITSM strategies. However, this sentiment is balanced by an equal number acknowledging the necessity for significant enhancements.

This post delves into the nuances of ITSM adoption, the implications of the remote work era, the transformative role of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation, the intensifying investment in cloud infrastructure, and the evolving focus on the employee experience.

1. ITSM adoption and perception:

• Large organizations typically have more complex infrastructures and have been leading the adoption of ITSM, necessitating robust solutions for their extensive requirements. (Imarc Group, 2024)
• Small- and medium-sized enterprises are adopting ITSM solutions at the highest growth rate, seeking cost savings and flexibility to compete with larger businesses. (Research and Markets, 2024)
• A significant growth in the ITSM market is anticipated, with a forecasted size of $22.1 billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 15.9%. (MarketsandMarkets, 2024)
• North America is expected to hold a major share of the cloud ITSM market, with an increasing number of businesses adopting hybrid cloud and on-premises solutions. (Mordor Intelligence, 2024)
• The integration of AI in ITSM solutions is not just a trend, it is also starting to make a real impact, with predictions that 70% of organizations will implement structured automation by 2025, significantly up from 20% in 2021. (TOPdesk, 2024)
• Challenges in ITSM adoption often include a lack of senior management buy-in, inadequate tools, and the need for strategic alignment at higher levels. (AXELOS, 2022)

Check out our cloud-native ITSM software ›

2. Impact of remote work on ITSM:

• There’s a notable shift towards AI-driven automation, with reports suggesting that companies implementing AI-powered knowledge base tools have improved first-contact resolution by five to seven percentage points and reduced handling time by 20 to 30 %. (SDI, 2024)
• Industries with unique remote work challenges, like the entertainment industry, are expected to increasingly embrace remote work as technological constraints are overcome. (Cybersecurity Intelligence, 2023)
• With the proliferation of devices—29 billion connected to the internet—IT helpdesks face escalating challenges, causing 80 percent of IT leaders to work longer hours. (Cybersecurity Intelligence, 2023)
• The management complexity for IT teams has risen, with 35 percent finding the variety of devices and locations challenging. (Cybersecurity Intelligence, 2023)
• The overloading of VPNs is causing performance issues, leading to a pivot away from traditional VPNs to more modern solutions. (Cybersecurity Intelligence, 2023)
• The transition to remote work has led to a surge in ITSM ticket volumes, exceeding the historical annual growth rate and placing added pressure on IT staff. (InvGate, 2022)

3. AI and automation in ITSM:

• Organizations using generative AI for ticket resolution have seen a remarkable 75% reduction in resolution times, leading to increased productivity and happier employees. (SDI, 2024)
• Around 60% of companies are now using AI-based ITSM tools to enhance their service desk functions. (Rezolve, 2023)
• AI-driven automation in ITSM can potentially reduce incident resolution times by up to 50%. (Rezolve, 2023)
• About 75% of ITSM professionals believe that AI will significantly impact ITSM by 2025. (Rezolve, 2023)

Find out how AI is influencing service management ›

4. Cloud infrastructure spend:

• Cloud-native platforms are on the rise, with predictions that by 2025, 95% of new digital workloads will be on such platforms, a significant increase from 30% in 2021. (SDI, 2024)
• Investment in cloud infrastructure services has increased remarkably, with a 29% growth from the previous year, indicating accelerated cloud adoption. (Rezolve, 2023)
• The leading players in the cloud market are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, which collectively hold about 66% of the global market share. (Rezolve, 2023)
• Multi-cloud strategies are becoming more prevalent, with 42% of companies using four or more public cloud services for their workloads. (Tech Target, 2023)

5. Employee experience:

• Organizations using AI and automation report that employees believe they can increase their workload by 30% due to the efficiency gains provided by these technologies. (SDI, 2024)
• Enhancing employee experience is a growing focus in ITSM, with 67% of organizations acknowledging the importance of better employee experiences. (Halo ITSM, 2023)
• There’s an increasing trend to improve employee engagement and retention through enhanced ITSM-driven experiences. (Rezolve, 2023)
• The adoption of AI and intelligent automation in ITSM is set to play a significant role in improving employee experiences by reducing incident resolution times and increasing the availability of IT support. (AXELOS, 2022)

The ITSM landscape continues to evolve. Organizations are adapting to the demands of remote work, exploring the advantages of AI and automation, investing heavily in cloud services, and placing a renewed emphasis on the employee experience. By embracing these trends, companies can stay resilient and agile in the face of ongoing digital transformation.

Explore enterprise ITSM solutions ›

At BMC, we promote an “open borders” approach to the mainframe, treating it like another platform in the enterprise IT landscape, rather than a siloed, separate entity with its own practices and tools. By integrating the BMC AMI portfolio with top solutions on and off the platform, opening the mainframe to custom solutions with APIs, and providing user interfaces that are easy to use for mainframe veterans and newcomers alike, we support mainframe-inclusive enterprise toolchains that provide maximum value to our customers and, most importantly, their end users.

In this spirit of an open mainframe, we held the BMC Mainframe Tech Connect event at BMC’s office in Pune, India, on October 13, 2023. The event brought together developers, database administrators (DBAs), solution architects, and industry leaders for a day filled with innovation and knowledge sharing. Showcasing the innovative solutions within the BMC AMI portfolio, particularly BMC AMI DevX, BMC AMI Data, and BMC AMI Ops, the event provided a valuable platform for both seasoned and new mainframe professionals. Attendees had the opportunity to discover the advanced tooling capabilities of BMC AMI products, aimed at enhancing operational efficiency in mainframe environments.

The agenda for the event was jam-packed with engaging sessions and presentations, beginning with a keynote address from BMC Vice President of Research and Development David Jeffries entitled, “Future-Ready Innovation with Your Mainframe.” Attendees then had the opportunity to visit several booths, each offering unique interactive sessions related to BMC AMI products, providing insight into various aspects of the mainframe world, such as developer experience (DevX), data management, and DevOps.

Read on to learn more about the subjects covered and watch presentations from each booth.

BMC AMI DevX

Three booths were dedicated to BMC AMI DevX solutions, each covering different tools and capabilities that enhance the mainframe developer experience. The first booth was dedicated to enhancements to the code-writing experience, including macros for editing COBOL; code coverage (BMC AMI DevX Workbench for Eclipse); the new BMC AMI Code Insights solution that enables developers to refactor large programs into smaller, callable services; DevOps integration with Microsoft Azure, Jenkins, and Github; data privacy rules; find and replace and rule explorer in BMC AMI DevX Data Studio; and virtual and non-virtual test creation (BMC AMI DevX Total Test).

The second BMC AMI DevX booth focused on adding and saving filters in BMC AMI DevX Explorer, debugging IBM^® IMS™ message processing programs (MPP) in BMC AMI DevX Code Debug, features of BMC AMI DevX File-AID, and promoting code with approval in BMC AMI DevX Code Pipeline.

The third BMC AMI DevX booth focused on the use of webhooks in BMC AMI Common Enterprise Services (CES) and using CES with BMC AMI DevX iStrobe to compare profiles  and find potential performance improvements and , as well as an overview and demonstration of BMC AMI zAdviser.

BMC AMI Data

Four booths were dedicated to BMC AMI Data, with the first focusing on embracing DevOps for IMS; managing complex IMS environments efficiently with BMC AMI Database Advisor for IMS and BMC AMI Change Manager for IMS; and simplifying IMS systems management with BMC AMI System Administration for IMS Console and BMC AMI Energizer for IMS Connect Web User Interface.

Also concentrating on IMS, the second BMC AMI Data booth demonstrated how to make a smooth transition to IMS-managed application control blocks (ACBs) using BMC AMI Data for IMS solutions, as well as how to make online fast path data entry database (DEDB) structural changes and build production-grade development and test environments.

A third IMS-centered booth featured an overview of BMC AMI Datastream for IMS, how to spot trends and patterns associated with IMS message queues and prevent outages caused by queue overflow, and how to dynamically manage aspects of an IMS Connect environment without recycling IMS Connect.

The final BMC AMI Data booth featured a look at the next-generation IBM^® Db2^® administrator and containerized BMC AMI DevOps for Db2^®, as well as SQL optimization with BMC AMI SQL Performance for Db2^®.

BMC AMI Ops

Three booths featured demonstrations and information on BMC AMI Ops, with the first booth showing how BMC AMI Ops Insight can help predict and avoid system-impacting issues.

The second booth showed how to tune IMS for better performance and demonstrated an end-to-end comprehensive monitoring solution for IBM^® z/OS^® Connect environments.

Finally, the third BMC AMI Ops booth featured how to monitor application and SQL release incompatibilities using BMC AMI Ops Performance Reporter and data object manager (DOM) data collector, as well as BMC AMI Storage IAM.

A successful day

Summing up the day, BMC Senior Director of Product Development Sandeep Sawant said, “It was a pleasant surprise to see so many professionals from various companies in Pune attending this event, which was on a working day. They spent some quality time with our R&D colleagues to understand the new capabilities embedded in our solutions. Many of them were thrilled to see some really cool tools in action which can greatly impact their productivity as well as the accuracy of work.”

David Jeffries agreed, saying, “It’s fair to say we were all blown away by the attendance and engagement of so many customers, mainframe advocates, and representatives of Global Systems Integrators. Not only did we have a terrific afternoon of information and idea sharing, but the engagement at the various product demo booths enriched both customer and development teams. I think we firmly underlined the constant innovation BMC is bringing to the mainframe platform.”

In conclusion, the 2023 BMC Mainframe Tech Connect event was a grand success, bringing together mainframe professionals and enthusiasts to explore BMC’s innovative solutions and gain valuable insights, engage with industry experts, and get hands-on experience with BMC AMI products. The event was a testament to the ever-evolving mainframe landscape and the role that BMC plays in driving innovation and resiliency in this critical sector. To learn more about the BMC AMI portfolio, visit bmc.com/ami.

September 15^th through October 15^th is the annual celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month, which recognizes and honors the LatinE community’s contributions, diverse cultures, and extensive histories. At BMC, many of our LatinE employees are members of the LatinE employee resource group (ERG), one of 10 ERGs at BMC. For Hispanic Heritage Month, we asked members what the month means to them and how their heritage has informed their experiences.

For Fernando Guerrero, Legal Counsel for Mexico and North LATAM at BMC, it has been crucial to identify himself as a Latino. “I have fallen in love with LATAM after realizing all the countries, all the people with whom I can form bonds based on that,” he shares. “[It’s also important to] understand and appreciate the differences between those of us who were born and live in LATAM and those who were born elsewhere but have Latin ancestry. The experience is not the same.”

He adds that finding the BMC LatinE ERG was extremely beneficial. “I live the Hispanic Heritage experience 24/7, and it´s an honor to show it to the company I work for. This group helped me fall in love with BMC. I joined the company in the middle of the pandemic and my manager left two months after she hired me, so I started socializing with people from all over the world through this ERG,” he explains. “It was my balance in the storm, when there was no other way to meet people.”

Jennifer Drai, an IS&T Senior Project Manager at BMC, credits her Hispanic heritage for helping her define her personal and professional identity. “I [have a] deep appreciation for family moments and bonds, the love of community and support, and the hard-working spirit and passion that defines us,” she says.

“To better appreciate the Hispanic culture, it is important for our future generations to learn about the history behind every country, their contributions to the world, and all the struggles they’ve experienced and continue to [face] in order to remain the independent and prosperous nations that they are today.”

“Hispanic/LatinE cultures have, and continue to provide, a myriad of positive contributions to our world from our Mayan, Inca, and Aztec ancestors to our latest heroes, artists, engineers, and influencers that continue to make positive impacts worldwide. BMC’s LatinE ERG has made me feel like there is a little piece of home and family at work. Every time I get to chat and connect with our fellow members, it feels like we already know each other.”

Eric Olmo, Senior VP of People and Spaces at BMC, has a personal experience as an immigrant, arriving in the United States at the age of four. “This has gifted me with the ability to observe being an American from a broader point of view and has made me proud to identify as both an American and a member of the LatinE community. Through my background, I have developed a sense of affinity [for] and understanding of those who have also immigrated to the United States,” he explains.

Olmo says his mother was integral to helping him retain his heritage. “She was very intentional in making sure that I did not lose my native language and tie to the motherland,” he says. “The benefits of being bilingual are invaluable cognitively, as well as providing that central connection to [my] cultural heritage. It also helps me stay connected with my culture and with my family abroad. Maintaining a lifetime strong bond with family is very important to me.”

Natalie Díaz Paldanius, a Communications Consultant at BMC, was raised in the United States and spent her childhood summers visiting Mexico. ”I am very proud of my Mexican background. I am lucky that I grew up going to Mexico almost every summer to reconnect with family members and explore the different regions of a place that means so much to me,” she explains.

“Like many other cultures, the LatinE culture is a genuinely selfless and warm community to all. They always put others first. We are all about connection and supporting one another, whether we have known you for years or just met you yesterday, which is something I’ll never take for granted.”

“From my passion for building relationships, to my strong work ethic, every aspect of my personality has to do with the culture I was raised in. I believe it is important to be intentional about learning about all cultures, but most especially the culture that you identify with. There is so much richness and depth that the LatinE culture has to offer.”

“It is also important to know about the struggles the LatinE cultures have overcome or still face today. With this knowledge, you can become an informed advocate for your community and help make positive change for future generations through small and big actions.”

We hope you’ll join BMC in celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month as we support these global organizations.

• LGBTI Social Alliance of Antioquia is a youth, social, and community-based organization that promotes actions and develops strategies aimed at the recognition of diversity as a common heritage of humanity.
• AFESU in Brazil promotes human dignity through the citizen, educational, and professional formation of socially vulnerable women from childhood to adulthood.
• Gerando Falcões is an organization dedicated to transforming the lives of children, young people, leaders, and favela residents through education and access to work and technologies in Brazil.
• Tarjimly is a crowdsourced translation app staffed by volunteer translators. Our blog post on the organization is here.
• Nutre a un Nino is a non-profit working with poor rural communities in Mexico to foster social, economic, and environmental development in favor of child nutrition.
• HeForShe is a global non-profit mobilizing for gender equality.

Every year, BMC brings together industry influencers, analysts, and media for an opportunity to showcase both our core and emerging technologies. While it might sound really self-serving, it’s an opportunity for BMC to share how current technology trends (think ChatGPT and digital twins) are actually useful and viable for the enterprise.

On June 14, 2023, BMC welcomed 18 media and industry analysts from around the world to share, showcase, chat, discuss, and debate the hot topics for enterprise tech. Regardless of geography, the topics of artificial intelligence (AI) and data emerged as universal considerations in enterprise technology investments.

Guests attended six demos that built on the company’s existing strengths and future investments in AI and applied them to an expanded set of data-centric use cases:

1. 3D visualization with motion-enabled pipeline management and root cause analysis for data pipeline issues
2. Digital twin-enabled solutions for IoT and edge automation and remediation set in a manufacturing environment
3. Next-generation IT self-service and support with augmented reality using a virtual assistant
4. Predictive insights and site reliability engineering (SRE) for hybrid IT through AI-enabled service management and operations management
5. Self-service knowledge support for the enterprise with natural language processing and BMC HelixGPT
6. Cloud to mainframe to edge with AIOps for enterprise-wide automation

Attendees were given an inside look at how our strengths in enterprise service management, IT operations, business process and application workflow automation and orchestration, and mainframe management are evolving for future use cases with AI across the following areas:

• ServiceOps emerged as the way forward to eliminate the silos of service management and operations management to support business speed and agility, as well as the employee and customer experience.
• AIOps was highlighted as a mature BMC capability across hybrid and multi-cloud IT infrastructures to help organizations gain even greater value in their existing investments.
• DataOps showed that data pipeline orchestration offers immense value through insights that could shape front and back office operations.
• DevOps once again reinforced the need to have all supporting IT and operations technologies aligned for true agile practices.
• AutonomousOps was introduced as the way to bring increased automation—driven by machine learning (ML) and AI—into the enterprise for predictive insights and automated remediation.

BMC customers joined in on the fun and shared their experiences in evolving their businesses through enterprise-wide, intelligent automation, ServiceOps, and DevOps enabled by BMC. The summit was held in a historical building in San Francisco, mirroring our own strong heritage and resilience, and the innovations presented reflect the incredible evolutionary journey that we have been on over the past few years—including the best three years of revenue performance in history with the most innovations delivered. And we’re just getting started.

Join us on June 14 at 2 p.m. ET, as BMC Vice President of Worldwide Channels and Innovation Sam Lakkundi welcomes digital innovator Stefan Olander to the BMC Transformational Speaker Webinar Series.

One of the world’s leading digital innovators, Stefan is co-founder and CEO of OMORPHO gravity sportswear. As a published author and thought leader, he frequently shares his deep brand understanding and technological insight to teach organizations how to carefully manage the human and tech equation and bridge the physical and digital worlds to deliver creative, experiential solutions for consumers and businesses.

Over the past 15 years, he has led several groundbreaking global initiatives and collective consumer experiences, including inspiring 800,000 people to run a 10K in a single day while he was vice president of digital innovation at Nike. During the webinar, “Driving Digital Innovation in a Data-Rich World,” he’ll share:

• Lessons learned from helping transform Nike into a fitness technology company
• Data-centric ideas and insights to help individuals and businesses thrive in the digital age
• How the consumer experience shapes technology solutions
• How to manage the human and tech equation

In 2022, 5.7 million people attended Formula One races around the world, with revenue growing to $2.573 billion. Those two nuggets of intel about one of the biggest sports in the world are data points, and in our latest BMC Transformational Speaker Series, BMC VP of Sales Jeff Hardy and Oracle Senior Director of ISV Success Directors Dan Grant welcomed Formula One Racing Data Analyst Mark Gallagher for a wide-ranging discussion on how data, analytics, and insights are being used to improve efficiency, safety, and more for the organization’s drivers and vehicles. Here are a few excerpts from the conversation.

Mark shared that the organization’s technology evolution since 1950 has been iterative. “We started off by learning how to make cars go faster. We then embraced aerodynamics and learned how to make aircraft go faster, which is effectively what a Formula One car is today. It’s an inverted jet fighter,” he says. “And really the third suite of tools have been digital. And it’s extraordinary to really reflect on the fact that Formula One’s digital transformation has been taking place for more than half of its history.”

“Now to this day, all teams and particularly the more competitive teams [are] utilizing data and analytics. Formula One’s all about action. And we want insights. We want to go on a journey of knowledge rather than a journey of hope. We don’t want to hope we win. We want to know we’re going to win. And that’s where the actionable insights come from.”

While initial analytics revealed what was going right, Mark says he and his team wanted more, and better, data and insights. “We suddenly started wanting a deeper dive. What’s going to help us go faster? What’s going to help us manage risks better? What’s going to enable us to prevent negative outcomes and drive positive outcomes,” he explains. “And that there is the analytics space. Race car drivers haven’t changed very much over the years, but the ecosystem within which they’re operating is night and day difference, thanks to our data-driven environment.”

Mark acknowledged Formula One has had its share of negative outcomes over its history, with fatal accidents occurring on the track every year or multiple accidents per year several years ago, and says the advances they have made through technology mean that younger drivers have never experienced that. “One of the really big changes over the last quarter of a century has been the improvement in our risk management, our ability to use real-time data to spot trends, to analyze failure modes developing, to look at diagnostics in real time and say, ‘Actually, there’s a problem developing,’” he points out.

“When you look at a lot of accidents, they’re caused by a failure, component failure that’s caused by a particular issue arising. In many cases … back in the day, we couldn’t do anything about [that]. But now we can. We can instantaneously, if necessary, call a halt to operations. That doesn’t happen very often, but if we need to, we can call the whole operation.”

“We can manage the lifecycle of up to 80,000 components that we’re going through on the car through the year. And that means that every single aspect and in total, granular detail is being managed so effectively to ensure that we get optimized performance and that risks are minimized. So, when people ask what’s been the big change for me, there is an enormous change.”

Mark adds that airlines have done the same thing. “We’re not the first industry to do that. Every time we get in an aircraft, we’re getting on board something that is inherently safe because of the culture of examining data, forensically examining data from past events in order to ensure that future outcomes are possible,” he explains. “So again, Formula One has looked at aviation and aerospace and said, ‘That’s the level of engineering we’re going to move to.’ And data-driven tools have been integral to that evolution.”

Mark says that between 1950 and 2000, about 45 percent of the time, Formula One cars simply failed due to mechanical issues, and that’s also now become a thing of the past. “Considering that we pride ourselves as engineering companies, we actually weren’t very good at building robust, reliable technology. Today, Formula One world champions can realistically expect to go through a whole season without suffering a single mechanical or technical failure,” he shares.

“I think Lewis Hamilton … went four and a half years without a single significant technical failure. I’ve never had a road car that’s lasted four and a half years with robust technology. So, in Formula One, that quality, that reliability, the foundation stones of the quality of our engineering and outcomes, that has been made possible by our data-driven environment. We’re no longer hoping everything’s going to be okay. We know what the outcome can be.”

If you’re a fan of movies about race cars, you’re familiar with the big moments where a trainer or a coach clicks the stopwatch to marvel at how fast the car got around the track. Mark says they’re light years beyond that. “When we look at the metrics that we are interested in, it all started with the humble stopwatch, [and us wondering], ‘How can we get from A to B faster than our competitors?’” he says.

“How do we get from where we are now to where we want to be more efficiently than our competition? [Now], we are looking at thousands of parameters. We’re talking about 300 sensors on the car, maybe … 1,200 channels of data. The cars are generating … about ten gigabytes of data per lap and a couple of terabytes of data over the weekend from the car. And in terms of the KPIs …we’ve got a ton of people looking at all the metrics. We know the pressures of the tires, we know the temperatures of the tires, we know everything that the human being driving the car is doing.”

“Most of what you’re looking at is all doing fine, but we are really interested in the opportunities, and this is where the actionable insight’s kick in, because [when] you get an anomaly … it’s amazing what we can do. And in its most extreme form, let’s say you were leading the race and you had three laps of the race remaining, and an issue develops on a particular system, we can monitor that system. We can talk to the driver and say, ‘Can you modify your driving because this system is beginning to fail,’ or ‘There’s an issue with this system.’ We might even tell the driver to switch off a particular system. We’ve even had occasions where we’ve had Formula One drivers do the equivalent of control, alt, delete on their steering wheel and literally reset everything and it’s cured a problem.”

“In terms of the metrics that we’re interested in, it’s anything that’s going to show us our benchmark performance against the competition and where the opportunities and the anomalies … and the risks are that we can really dig into some detail that’s going to help us to improve performance.”

“This is why when you see Formula One race car drivers being interviewed after a qualifying session or after a race, they very often say, ‘We’ve got to look at the data.’ And what they’re actually saying is, ‘We’ve got to look at where that issue lies [or] where that opportunity lies.’ It’ll always be the thing or the items which are going to lead to us getting a performance improvement. So, our data-driven environment from the driver’s perspective, is all about managing and gaining insights into any metrics that are going to supercharge our continuous improvement as a race team.”

BMC is keenly interested in the world of data and analytics, and helping companies pursue and improve their data strategies. We recently commissioned 451 Research, part of S&P Global Market Intelligence, to survey 1,100 IT and data professionals from diverse global regions, and those finding have just been released in a new report, Profitable Outcomes Linked to Data-Driven Maturity. You can also check out our deep dive into the world of DataOps here.

To learn more about how the need for speed and the need for data is driving the future of Formula One, Mark’s thoughts on artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicles, and how one driver was so thirsty for data he was checking the screens around the track while driving 200 MPH during a race.

We know we’re living in an increasingly data-driven world, but have you ever wondered what all that data says about us? Dr. Tricia Wang has, and BMC CTO Ram Chakravarti and AWS Senior Partner Development Manager Vijaya Balakrishna were honored to recently host a new Transformational Speaker webinar with the global tech ethnographer, researcher, and popular TED Talk speaker to get her take on “thick data”—the human element invisible to quantitative data analysis. Here are some highlights of the conversation.

Looking beyond the qualitative

Dr. Wang kicked off the discussion explaining that what’s most interesting to her is going beyond the basic definition that most people think of when they use the term “data.” “We all know what big data is. It’s numbers that are put in spreadsheets that are put in data lakes, data warehouses, all that stuff…that you can then do math on. But the world is not just numbers. There are other ways to represent the world and to represent the…processes that we’re interested in, especially that businesses are interested in,” she explains.

“If you think about in your everyday life, you don’t make decisions just based on numbers. We make decisions based on a holistic picture, and so numbers are taken into account, [but] you’re also looking at non-quantitative indicators.” She points to people’s reliance on smart watches and Fitbits  as monitoring tools while still paying attention to general indicators such as how they actually feel.

She explains that it’s been her life’s work educating business leaders who want to stay ahead on how to yield value from non-quantitative data and leverage it as an indicator to drive actionable insights and make their businesses more agile and customer centric. And she says that while automation is gaining prominence, it’s not the only tool that you should have in your toolbox.

“Any qualified, legit business leader is fully aware that you need to have domain expertise and that domain expertise holds so much thick data,” she says. “There’s so much thick data that’s required to manage relationships…to read[ing] a room [and] knowing how to present a story to get buy in. The higher you go up, you’re really just…trying to convince people to see your point of view and get to some aligned outcome. And that requires thick data. You can’t just convince people based on quantitative numbers.”

“You need to have a human in the loop and really understand the human model, or the landscape that you are trying to understand, [or] the business outcomes. And then you can look at the variables that are going to help you understand that human model [and] build your data model based on the human model.” She adds that she tells her CEOs to stop treating their CIOs and CTOs like technical partners and help them understand their role as cultural change agents for the entire business.

Data in a brave new world

Dr. Wang turned the discussion toward the pandemic, highlighting that it’s had a significant impact not just on people in their personal and professional lives, but businesses, too. “Business ethnography now is about observing customers, their needs and motivations, in their own environment, in their own cultural setting. The whole world has changed and it’s still changing. We live in an incredible time where we talk about digital transformation and businesses leading digital transformation. The reality is front facing digital transformation was not what…it wasn’t really until the pandemic really forced the whole world online,” she says.

“One of the biggest changes is what I call the spatial collapse, where before, for centuries, since the Industrial Revolution, we lived in a way that has been more or less separated by three spaces. Home is the first space, the second space is the workspace, and then the third space is everything you do outside of that, from having fun, seeing strangers, meeting with your friends. And what the pandemic did was collapse all the three spaces into one. That is one of the biggest trends for changing customer behavior and the psychology of it.”

“The mental models of how they build their lives has radically changed. And it doesn’t just mean it’s customer behavioral change. It means employees change. The way we recruit talent changes. People have different expectations when there’s a spatial collapse.” She points out that’s why so many employees bristled at return to office mandates.

A new (siloed) world view

Dr. Wang also points out that in addition to the pandemic, sociopolitical and geopolitical events like the global supply chain shortage and the war in Ukraine have all had ripple effects from “how someone is staying warm over the night, and how they’re getting food” because we are in “a very interconnected world.” And while that connectedness holds true for the real world, people are shifting more toward silos online, which in turn is disrupting how digital business finds its customers.

“We’re going to see more polarization. I’m not anti-social media, but I do think [its] algorithms have been optimized for moving people into polarization and two extreme ends. Having safe spaces for conversation becomes much harder…which means that a lot of people are moving off social media, off of public spaces, into smaller walled gardens like private conversation groups like WhatsApp or Signal,” she explains.

“What this means for businesses, in this era, [is] that you have to do a better job on getting to know your customer. First-party data becomes even more valuable. However, customers or…people are much more aware of the value of their personal data to a [billion-dollar] market, and people want a piece of that. [It] requires trusting relationships [and] the business has to change the way they collect data and communicate data…and show transparently what [they’re] doing with that data.”

A shifting focus

Another effect of the pandemic is that people moved to new cities and towns—and reexamined how they live, elevating larger discussions around environmental, social, and governance (ESG); corporate social responsibility (CSR); and sustainability. People now want much more transparency from businesses about how they are going to influence their lives, contribute to the world overall, and make it a better place—and they’re redefining what “better” means.

“One of the things we’re seeing is the change in supply chain strategy, because people are saying, ‘more local.’ (…) They have a new kind of relationship with those around them, the city or the space around them, and their shops are connected to their local economies in different ways. There’s a lot happening around regionalization of supply chains to keep things more stable. People are much more aware of a disruptive supply chain and really thinking through, ‘ ‘Where does my food come from?’ ‘What does my clothing come from?’ ‘What kind of stores or businesses am I supporting?’ Big topic issues that maybe weren’t as top of mind, like the climate and food security, will become even more important.”

As Dr. Wang shared, the concept of data is far-reaching, and automation can help you get a handle on it and yield its maximum value. To learn more about automating your entire big data lifecycle from end to end—and cloud to cloud—to deliver insights more quickly, easily, and reliably, download our e-book.

In today’s hypercompetitive, data-driven digital landscape, a proactive posture can help organizations deliver high-performing digital experiences and fast, uninterrupted service to achieve solid growth, market share, and profit. Is your organization ready with an end-to-end solution that leverages automation and applies emerging, predictive technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and data science to IT operations (ITOps) and DevOps initiatives? If not, then how do you choose the right solution?

There are myriad artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) solutions on the market that provide piecemeal intelligence and automation capabilities, but BMC’s comprehensive, enterprise-wide AIOps capabilities stand apart in keeping pace with today’s business and the demand for DevOps agility. Several analyst reports agree that BMC is a leader in the field:

BMC is spotlighted as both a leader and an “outperformer” in the 2022 GigaOm Radar for AIOps Solutions report for “leading the other AIOps tools that support legacy systems [and span] the management domains from legacy to cloud to provide a core advantage sought by many enterprises.”

GigaOm also recognizes our maturity as a strength and points out that our increasing focus on AIOps should help boost our value going forward. The report calls out our expansive feature set and flexibility, saying, “The BMC platform for AIOps is comprehensive and has strong capabilities for monitoring the entire enterprise.”

Additionally, BMC was named a market leader in Research in Action’s  Vendor Selection Matrix™: Artificial Intelligence Predictive Analytics, achieving a recommendation index ranking of 98 percent. The research credits BMC’s position as a “veteran in aiding IT operations with automation” and highlights open AIOps as part of the BMC Helix platform, calling it “a single solution for both distributed and mainframe environments…with AI-driven advanced anomaly detection, event noise reduction, and topology-aware probable cause analysis for improved root cause detection.”

In addition to these leadership rankings, BMC’s AIOps solutions have also been recognized in the Gartner® Market Guide for AIOps Platforms; Forrester Now Tech: Artificial Intelligence For IT Operations, Q2 2022; and Constellation ShortList™ AIOps.

BMC’s AIOps solutions enable the scalable ingestion, analysis, and actionability of today’s ever-expanding volume, variety, and velocity of data so you can make better decisions, faster. Learn more about BMC and AIOps here, and check out our blogs on the topic.

BMC and AWS are pleased to welcome Dr. Tricia Wang as our next guest for our Transformational Speaker Webinar Series!

Please join us December 7 at 2 PM EST for a fascinating discussion about drawing on the power of big data—all you know about your customers and your market—and combining it with “thick data”—deeper insights that speak to true customer needs and wants—to transform your business.

About Dr. Wang

Dr. Wang is a global tech ethnographer, researcher, and popular TED Talk speaker who advises businesses in the patterns of how people use technology to drive decision-making, and how businesses can apply that learning to their enterprise processes and plans. A co-founder of Sudden Compass, a consulting firm that helps companies unlock new growth opportunities around customer centricity, Dr. Wang has also worked as a documentary filmmaker at NASA, an HIV/AIDS activist, and an educator specializing in culturally responsive pedagogy. Her Medium post, “Why Big Data Needs Thick Data,” is a frequently cited industry piece on the importance of an integrated data approach.

About the Webinar

Join BMC CTO Ram Chakravarti and Senior Partner Development Manager Vijaya Balakrishna from AWS as they engage in a lively conversation with Dr. Wang about the concept of “thick data” (the human element invisible to quantitative data analysis), the tools that reveal true customer preferences, and questions like:

• What makes thick data different from big data?
• Why are companies spending so much money on data technology and (mostly) not yet making more money?
• What are the important questions businesses should be asking their customers, right now?
• How can those answers help them devise strategies around corporate social responsibility, empowering the modern workforce, responding to lightning-quick changes in customer preferences, and more?

You will also learn about upcoming BMC-sponsored research on determining the value of data, based on answers from like-minded organizations around the world on their current data practices and the benefits they’re deriving from their data technology and processes.

The 2022 Gartner^® Magic Quadrant^™ for IT Service Management (ITSM) Platforms is now available. We believe that due to our enhanced solution capabilities and proven ability to execute, BMC was named a Leader for the ninth year in a row!

IT service support management tools are vital for infrastructure and operations organizations to manage support and delivery of IT services. This research profiles the market for enterprise ITSM tools to help I&O leaders make better selections.

In the Magic Quadrant report, Gartner provides detailed evaluations of 10 vendors. BMC is named as a Leader. Our position is based on the ability to execute and completeness of vision.

Here’s a snapshot of the quadrant.

Download the full report to:

• Learn why BMC was recognized as a Leader for ITSM Platforms
• Understand analyst strengths and cautions for all 10 recognized vendors

As a recognized industry expert, BMC prioritizes customer experience with a commitment to helping organizations maximize the value of our solutions.

Helping companies leverage data and automation on the road to ServiceOps

In a complementary study, the 2022 Gartner Critical Capabilities for ITSM report, Gartner offers more in-depth analysis and detailed use cases to explore how well vendors address specific customer needs.

To us, the Gartner positioning of BMC as a Leader in ITSM is particularly relevant in light of the firm’s views on ServiceOps. Noting the need to provide always-on products and services, Gartner defines “Service operations is the convergence of the infrastructure and application monitoring environments with the ITSM incident management practice to create a quicker and more effective mechanism for diagnosing and resolving incidents. The advent of AI and automation removes the silos, creating the concept of service operations to ensure that incidents can be more readily identified and resolved as soon as possible.”

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for IT Service Management Platforms, By Rich Doheny, Chris Matchett, Siddharth Shetty, 31 October 2022

Gartner, Critical Capabilities for IT Service Management Platforms, By Chris Matchett, Siddharth Shetty, Rich Doheny, 1 November 2022

Gartner, Hype Cycle™ for ITSM, 2022, By Siddharth Shetty, 13 July 2022

Gartner, Hype Cycle, and Magic Quadrant are registered trademarks of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and are used herein with permission. All rights reserved.

Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s Research & Advisory organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.