Imagine a world where your connected home, car, and energy provider can work together to run more efficiently, lower your energy bill, and help reduce the impact on climate change. At work, armies of microsensors perform their own analytics to detect impending equipment failures, and digital twins work hand-in-hand with robots to help solve them. Around the globe and beyond, net-zero devices share intelligence, deliver personalized services, and transform everyday experiences—all while harvesting their own energy. That world is coming faster than you think.

A recent two-part episode of The Savvy Innovators, a Voice of America podcast series sponsored by BMC, featured a wide-ranging conversation among four thought leaders in the fast-evolving and interconnected Internet of Things (IoT) and edge computing realms: Sam Lakkundi, Vice President of Innovation and Head of BMC Innovation Labs at BMC; Tom Soderstrom, Director of Chief Technologists at Amazon Web Services (AWS) Public Sector; Aditya Varma, Director of Digital Innovation and Transformation of an Indian Federal Agency; and Angela Nicoara, Professor of Computer Science and Head of the Internet of Things (IoT) Innovation Lab at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences (HSLU), Switzerland. Highlights follow.

Smart things take over the world

Organizations across every industry are beginning to seize upon the opportunities that edge computing and IoT present. In fact, IDC published a report in January predicting worldwide edge spending to hit $176 billion this year—up 14.8 percent over last year—and reach nearly $274 billion by 2025. Meanwhile, the number of IoT devices worldwide is forecast to almost triple from 9.7 billion in 2020 to more than 29 billion in 2030. Soon, edge and IoT infrastructure, pervasive connectivity, and lower technology costs will ensure that people, devices, and data can communicate, collaborate, and innovate efficiently and affordably.

While IoT and edge have been gaining momentum for several years, the COVID-19 pandemic provided a critical boost as numerous real-world applications gained new relevance. “The rapid adoption of IoT technologies during the pandemic has defined and transformed numerous companies in different fields, such as healthcare, smart buildings, and industrial IoT,” says Angela. Today, major industry verticals with more than 100 million connected devices in place include electricity, gas, water supply, waste management, retail, wholesale, transportation, and more.

In turn, this broad adoption of IoT devices and the edge computing services they leverage offers a powerful economic opportunity for communication services providers (CSPs). “The IoT has long been viewed as the capability that will help communication service providers extract better returns from capital-intensive 5G infrastructures. These organizations have seen wins regarding revenue generation and cost savings,” says Sam.

Even government agencies, typically slow to embrace emerging technologies, are getting on board. “This is making a big difference for government organizations, helping accelerate their digital transformation initiatives,” says Aditya. “IoT devices, smart sensors, and edge compute promise to break traditional data silos and connect the edge to the cloud and to the core. The ability to collect, aggregate, and analyze data at the point of its inception with minimal latency is the essence of edge IoT. Government organizations have understood this.”

For Tom, the big picture is one of pervasive data and intelligent services transforming all kinds of experiences throughout the day. “IoT solutions can be implemented in our homes and offices, in factories and oil fields and agricultural fields, in planes and ships, in automobiles—everywhere. The goal is harnessing the data generated by your IoT edge devices and enabling them to act intelligently.”

IoT goes to work

Smart devices from doorbells, toasters, and vacuum cleaners to chatty digital assistants have already become a familiar presence in many homes. As with the emergence of smartphones and mobile apps, businesses will need to scramble to catch up with the technological sophistication and convenience people already enjoy in their personal lives. “Increasing employees’ level of comfort with technology in the workplace is a logical next step after they’ve adopted the same technology at home,” says Tom. Aditya says there’s more work to be done in this effort: “For major adoption of IoT in the workforce, the UI [user interface] and UX [use experience] must be convenient and friendly. For the public sector, it needs to be integrated into playbooks to facilitate wider adopted by orchestration.”

Employee experience and business productivity use cases may be a work in progress, but the opportunities on an enterprise level are hugely compelling. “A smart enterprise consists of a whole bunch of devices that can talk to each other,” says Tom. “You can collect all this information, put it in the cloud, run machine learning and reinforcement learning on it, and push it back out to these new devices. It was mind-boggling what we could do. Some of our experiments delivered full return on investment in three days with lab safety, water savings, and electricity savings.”

Within industrial IoT, companies can digitize processes, transform business models, and improve performance and productivity while decreasing waste. They can also find and fix emerging problems much more quickly. “IoT predictive maintenance analytics captures the state of industrial equipment to identify potential breakdowns before they impact production, resulting in an increase in equipment lifespan, worker safety, and supply chain optimization,” says Sam.

In fact, the industrial workforce will soon include “digital twins”—virtual representations of facilities and equipment that can be manipulated remotely for faster, safer repairs. “A digital twin of a piece of heavy equipment shows that it’s leaking. You turn a valve in your digital twin and the same thing happens on the factory floor,” explains Tom. This model will be especially valuable in locations that are difficult for human workers to access in a safe and timely manner. “You could be looking at a critical machinery on board an aircraft, a ship, a heavy vehicle working in a mine, deep underwater,” says Sam.

On an individual consumer level, Sam recounts answering his doorbell one morning to find a Tesla mechanic who had been summoned by his own car. “Think about the potential breakdown that would have happened,” he says. “Using predictive analytics at the edge, the company was able to understand that there was a problem that needed to be fixed before it inconvenienced the customer.” The same can apply on an enterprise level. “An oil company chief experience officer (CXO) can look at how much oil each one of his wells is predicting, why a certain well is producing a lot less than the other ones, and then proactively address that. Edge IoT can give you the power of now and the power of data.”

Securing an ever-expanding attack surface

“In my view, security is the biggest challenge in IoT,” says Angela. “We want to get systems talking to each other, get data flowing, and get visibility to see that it’s happening in the way we want, but visibility and security don’t go well together. And if you don’t trust the small data, you can’t trust the big data. IoT hardware and software architectures must be built with security in mind from ground zero, not added later.” Standardization will be critical, she adds. “We need an active public-private partnership where industry advises the government on the standards we need for these protocols, for example, so that when we have multiple systems integrating, we can do a seamless job. That collaboration can help us build more robust and sustainable solutions.”

Aditya agrees on the need for security. “Security and privacy will be very important when you’re connecting more devices and obtaining more data,” he says. “As the IoT market matures, we’re seeing more legislation around the security of these devices. Threats to IoT systems and devices can translate to bigger security risks because of the characteristics that the underlying technology possesses.” Again, shifting processing to the edge can help solve some of the challenges posed by IoT data. “Reduction in the transmission of data to external locations means fewer open connections and fewer opportunities for cyberattacks. Since data is no longer stored or processed in the centralized cloud, the consequences of a single breach or ransomware attack are highly mitigated.”

Edge computing offers similar benefits for reducing other types of risk. “With the distributed nature of edge AI, operational risk can be distributed across the entire network,” says Aditya. “If the centralized cloud server or cluster fails, individual edge devices can still maintain their function. This is extremely important for critical IoT applications such as healthcare and the military.”

To infinity and beyond

“The next five to ten years are likely to be exciting for industry and consumers,” says Angela. “Connected cars and autonomous flying drones will have personalized preferences and services. Then we’ll see the practical impact of artificial intelligence and the deployment of 5G and 6G networks, as well as moving telecom systems to space.”

Tom foresees more intuitive ways to integrate IoT and edge into daily life. “Natural and Immersive interfaces will become the norm, dynamically evolving to adjust to the context and the user. This will make it easier for everyone to use and interact with smart devices and systems.”

The vast volume of data flowing through edge IoT makes scalability a key factor. The fusion of IoT and artificial intelligence (AI) will help address this challenge. “We want the analytics and machine learning happening on the edge so that data can be pre-processed before it is sent back,” says Aditya. “This reduces throughput requirements. It makes the actions faster. A lot of decisions can be taken at the edge itself, and something which is critically required can come back to the core.”

As sustainability becomes a top priority for corporations, government, and individuals alike, the potential for net-zero devices is particularly exciting. “Energy harvesting capabilities like solar charging or vibration can be sufficient for powering computation for these devices,” says Angela. “As they become smaller, smarter, and more and more efficient, we’ll see them deployed in places that we’ve never before. That will help facilitate continuous access to data and processes that will make our day-to-day lives better and safer.”

To hear more of the conversation, including key elements of a successful IoT business strategy, the architectural requirements for data at IoT scale, and maintaining regulatory compliance in a data-powered world, listen to the two-part podcast here: “The Future of IoT and Edge Computing: Sooner Than You Think Part 1” and here: “The Future of IoT and Edge Computing: Sooner Than You Think Part 2.”

These days, economic volatility is a sure thing. Every day, the news has more examples of businesses preparing for (or reacting to) market changes with abrupt, sometimes severe cost-cutting measures. Businesses seeking a North Star to ensure stability and even greater success while weathering these kinds of changes can look to the Autonomous Digital Enterprise (ADE) framework.

The ADE is a digital-first business with distinct tech tenets and operating model characteristics that support transformation through actionable insights, business agility, and customer centricity. Providing actionable insights means leveraging data analytics tools and automation to gain broader perspectives, and using predictive intelligence to make better decisions, faster. Utilizing business agility means responding rapidly to demands and capitalizing on opportunities as soon as they arise, pivoting quickly when needed. Focusing on customer centricity means using technology to meet your customers where they want to be met and keeping your customers at the heart of every business decision you make.

The ADE Tenets in the Real World

The five distinct tech tenets of the Autonomous Digital Enterprise help maintain resiliency in times of constant disruptions. Let’s look at some real examples of how organizations can focus on the tech tenets.

A Transcendent Customer Experience gives people what they need, where and when they need it, in a highly personalized, frictionless way, allowing organizations to be the winners at attracting and retaining customers and employees. Take Southwest Airlines (SWA) as a cautionary tale. The 16,700 flights that SWA had to cancel over the recent holidays could cost the company as much as $825 million—but it’s harder to put a dollar value on the loss of reputation and trust from their customers.

The airline is reacting by providing frequent-flyer points to customers affected, launching a new sale to entice customers to fly with them again, and providing bonuses to impacted employees as part of their apology tour. SWA has the opportunity to prove now why their customers are important to them and go back to their roots of providing a great customer and employee experience on their journey.

Automation Everywhere is about driving efficiencies at scale. The pandemic brought automation into the mainstream, and it’s taken hold as a way to boost productivity inside and outside a business. As organizations scale back and refocus, automating everyday mundane tasks can help reduce costs associated with previously time-consuming, repetitive functions. It also frees up a business’s most valuable asset—its people—to do more important tasks, making them more productive and boosting retention.

While we’re talking about flight disruptions, how about mentioning the ground stop in the U.S. by the Federal Aviation Association (FAA) on January 11, 2023. A database failure triggered the FAA to implement the first nationwide stop of air traffic in more than 20 years, and it turns out that the reason was human error. A contractor unintentionally deleted files while “working to correct synchronization between the live primary database and a backup database.” Human error is a part of any business, and despite recurring rumors, robots won’t be replacing humans any time soon, but the FAA has an extraordinary opportunity to adopt automation as they strive to follow the ADE framework.

Agility is the name of the game when your business operations are the only thing you can control amid outside influences. Enterprise DevOps enables the rapid and continuous delivery of applications and services by applying DevOps processes, tools, skills, teams, and leadership across the business. One way that BMC recommends embracing Enterprise DevOps is by integrating DevOps across the entire stack, including mainframe, distributed, and cloud.

Airlines like Southwest and government agencies like the FAA are the types of organizations using a mainframe to store their data. But that data must also integrate with many other applications seamlessly to provide a Transcendent Customer Experience by implementing automated tools across the organization. Enterprise DevOps is the next step in the journey to ensure that developers and operations teams on all sides of a business are working together.

A Data-Driven Business captures, correlates, and monetizes data enterprise-wide, generating high-value business cases with AI/ML while also optimizing and improving data extraction and analysis. There’s never been a better time to work with what you have, and every customer, partner, and stakeholder engagement yields valuable data—if you know what to do with it.

Ticketmaster famously went down when billions of people (and bots) tried to buy Taylor Swift concert tickets online recently. It’s claimed the downtime was due to, “the staggering number of bot attacks as well as fans who didn’t have invite codes [driving] unprecedented traffic on our site, resulting in 3.5 billion total system requests—4x our previous peak.” While Ticketmaster believed that limiting the presale to “Verified Fans” who had to receive a code ahead of time would contain the demand to a reasonable amount, it was a perfect storm of the organization not understanding its data about Swifties and their propensity to buy concert tickets—especially for a tour postponed by the pandemic. It’s one thing to collect data, but a data-driven business will turn that data into actionable insights. And Ticketmaster’s woes aren’t over—parent company Live Nation just had to explain itself to a US Congressional committee.

Cyber threats continue to rise, and they can spike during times of socioeconomic turmoil. Implementing an Adaptive Cybersecurity posture can help you secure your business, your employee and customer data, and your devices with automated, AI-enabled, and crowdsourced threat detection that uses coordinated development, security, and operations (DevSecOps) strategies and a Zero Trust access and authentication framework.

Type the word “hack” into Google and click on the news icon and you’ll find out about the hacks that didn’t even make the feed of your normal news app. For example, T-Mobile’s recent hack in November with 37 million people affected was just one of many. Data breaches are starting to feel commonplace, but you can ensure that your company’s name isn’t in your customer’s next Google search if you ensure an Adaptive Cybersecurity posture.

Despite the above examples, (let’s be honest, companies only make the news when they’ve done something wrong), it’s not all doom and gloom. Organizations likes yours can continue to adapt and succeed amid ongoing geopolitical and socioeconomic turbulence and threats of recession. You can’t dictate future disruptions, but you can control how you respond to them. By adopting pervasive technologies for innovation and business growth and following the tech tenets of the Autonomous Digital Enterprise, you can be future-ready and primed for success, whatever comes to pass. Learn more at bmc.com/ade.

Even in the age of digital business, artificial intelligence (AI), and data-driven automation, employees remain the lifeblood of every organization. Put in a position to do their best work, there’s nothing a motivated and engaged workforce can’t accomplish.

Conversely, an unsatisfying or unproductive work experience can send employees fleeing to the exits—taking valuable skills, experience, and insight with them. Meeting employee needs and expectations has always been critical, but in a world reshaped by rapid innovation, remote work, and soaring worker mobility, it’s become both more urgent and more challenging than ever.

A new episode of The Savvy Innovators, a Voice of America podcast series sponsored by BMC, unpacks the ways people and organizations are redefining the employee experience today. Lynn Moffett, VP of HR at BMC, and Jin Zhang, Engineering Director at Meta, offer their perspectives for navigating the evolution to the future of work—as it rapidly becomes the present of work. Highlights of their conversation follow.

Rethinking the infrastructure of work

Consider how radically work has changed over the last 30 years. In the early 90s, laptops and cell phones were rare perks, meetings took place exclusively in physical spaces, and “working from home” was commonly seen as malingering, fairly or not. As the pace of innovation only accelerates, what will the next 30 years bring—or the next five?

“It really challenges us to think about what infrastructure we are going to need for the future,” says Jin, citing advances like robotic process automation (RPA), process mining, chatbots, low-code workflow platforms, AI, machine learning (ML), and intelligent document processing. And it’s not just about technical innovation; companies also need to consider the ways people work together. “No matter where we are from a technology standpoint, we’re always going to need human connectivity. The pandemic really brought that into focus,” she adds.

The consumerization of technology is a perennial theme in the modern workplace, but it’s important to understand why it matters to employees. It goes beyond comfort and convenience. “People want to be productive,” says Lynn. “They want to be efficient in what they do. People want to add value, and they want to do it much earlier in their career. Meeting their expectations is not just about touchy-feely employee experience. It’s about driving better revenue and becoming a better competitor in the marketplace.”

For non-technical employees, automated tools that eliminate drudgery and deliver the right data at the right time can make a huge difference. For software engineers, more user-friendly development tools with built-in testing can enable shift-left practices and free up time to focus on higher-value work.

Getting distributed employees on the same page

The rapid rise of remote and hybrid work has posed a variety of challenges, from data security to employee wellbeing to the mechanics of blended onsite-remote meetings. “As we evolve, the workplace has absolutely gone beyond [the] reach of the office buildings,” says Jin.

“You naturally worry about the security of the laptop and its data. Things like security procedures and data classifications, if they’re done well, can be seamless for an engineer or a developer. If they’re not done well, and I have to seek permission or check in and out whatever piece of data or code I need to work with, that’s going to be a nightmare. It’s key for us to think about providing high ease of use experiences. The more you can automate, the more you can enable collaboration, break barriers, and drive toward that one single goal to move fast and delight our customers.”

As an HR professional, Lynn emphasizes that remote employees need to feel just as supported, connected, and included as onsite workers. “There’s a large collection of accessible tech that companies can use to help employees with managing at-home office needs, mental health needs, and professional and personal growth, and that foster collaboration and deliberately spread corporate culture in now-disparate work environments,” she explains. “Tech can humanize the remote work experience, allowing employees to connect and learn from each other and build company culture while not in an office.”

Companies should always be alert to ways to efface the difference and distance between remote and onsite employees. “Not only do you need to enable these new remote or non-traditional workspaces. You also have to enable holistic collaboration throughout your entire workforce,” says Jin. Early in the pandemic, she noticed that employees who joined a video call in a conference room lacked an equivalent to the Zoom hand-raising feature. “We invested to give folks in the physical room the same ability to raise their hands in the virtual meeting room.”

Navigating the shift to a digital-first culture

While data science is an increasingly vital element of people management, as talent leaders acquire and leverage knowledge about the workforce and its work practices, it’s important to start with a clear understanding of what you’re trying to achieve. “Before you decide on a digital-first strategy, take a step back and look at how people are working today, how you want them to work, and what they need to be successful and productive,” says Jin. “What is the problem we’re trying to solve? What is the need? What is the want? What is the desire?”

Change management is just as crucial. “We need to think about how we can move fast, but also about how we can bring everyone along, because people are on all different walks of their own journeys,” Lynn points out. “Some people are much further along in their own technological journey versus others. Some people get scared around change and what it might mean for their job. Maybe they’re great employees who need to be reskilled for new needs. You need to be intentional about both moving your company forward and bringing everybody along.”

Making it safe to fail

As people at all levels come up to speed on new digital tools, skills, and ways of working, they need to feel fully supported in their learning process. “Employees have to be comfortable to fail,” says Lynn. “You don’t want failure all over the place, but you can’t let perfection be the enemy of good. You have to give people that space as they’re adopting these new practices.”

Jin values the same willingness to take chances on the engineering team. “Engineers and developers should feel very comfortable in taking risks. As we’re working on a product and making choices about its design and implementation, that first iteration isn’t always going to end up the perfect solution,” she explains. “Just get up and dust off and keep moving. It’s about nurturing that culture, while also enabling building feedback and correction loops into the system so that if you fail, it’s not a problem.”

To hear more of Jin and Lynn’s conversation, including where AI/ML and augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) fit into the changing world of work, listen to the whole podcast here: “Delighting Employees & Improving the Business: Modern Experiences.”

Data is everywhere, in everything we do, but how do organizations turn that data into insights to become more data-driven and evolve to an Autonomous Digital Enterprise?

In our latest “Savvy Innovators” podcast, we were joined by thought leaders in the data space—Jennifer Glenski, Director of Product Management in our BMC Innovation Labs; Maria Glenski, Senior Research Scientist and Team Lead at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; and Phil Vincenzes, Chief Analytics Officer at IntelliDyne, to discuss “The True Value of Data.”

For the love of data

Phil began his work in the data field in the days after 9/11. “I built teams that pioneered the development of what we now call and know as open source exploitation. We couldn’t wait to get to work in the morning,” he shares. [We] were using data science, but we didn’t know it at the time because that term didn’t exist…to find the bad guys doing bad things. That was my defining moment for getting passionate about using data for national security purposes. And I haven’t looked back since.”

Maria is part of a team that’s taking on some of the world’s greatest science and technology challenges. “I lead teams that are focused on research that models, characterizes, and explains complex systems and behaviors from humans in online and offline settings,” she says.

In her work, she looks at how information spreads and how users react to and consume different content, as well as how artificial intelligence (AI) fits into the mix. “The foundation of this work is the data. You can’t go do any of it without the data that is observing the world around us, the phenomena, how people interact, how humans interact, how AI and ML [machine learning] interact,” she adds.

At BMC, Jennifer applies data science and analytics to building new products and finding out more about how BMC’s customers are using data. “My passion for data really comes from being able to improve solutions and experiences for customers,” she says. “Progress improvement, better design, all of that is where I get my joy of discovering and using data and where I see the value.”

So much more than data

The value of data isn’t in data for data’s sake, but in all the things you can do with it. It’s the entry point into a larger discussion. According to Phil, “Data, and more specifically, the study and applied use of data, has a real or ‘potential impact’ on every living thing and entity on the planet. When we’re talking about the nitty gritty guts of computing, data is just a bunch of zeros and ones.”

“It has no real meaning or value unless we trust it and then overlay some type of analysis or interpretation, translating it into something usable that gains knowledge. The value was held within the data. It’s there, but it’s waiting to be realized through. Our job as analysts and data scientists is to release that value that the data holds,” he says.

Jennifer likens data to treasure that’s waiting to be discovered. “That could be the application of that data [or] perhaps an aggregate with additional data. And then your value extends past the initial application. So the value you get from using data isn’t just the sum of all the pieces of data. The whole can be greater,” she says.

She pointed to the example of a long-term medical research study she conducted. “There’s a lot of historical cancer research. You might make a new finding or discovery that’s valuable, but going on later, maybe a decade [later], you can look at the entire domain of that research. And some of those pieces can fill in the gaps of other studies, or you can see overarching trends that you wouldn’t have gotten just from the initial collection and application of the data in the first place.”

Maria looked at it another way. “There is value in data alone, but a lot of that value is what that data can support, what that data can help drive, develop, or provide insights on. But data alone is hard to have intrinsic value outside of that potential, especially if you’re working with a lot of it,” she says.

She explained that one of her projects has terabytes of data as part of an initiative to study math for artificial reasoning and science. “We’re able to do really cool things with that. But those terabytes alone, if that was all that we were producing and it was just sitting on a shelf somewhere, how much value is there in that,” she muses. “If we can have these large-scale data sets that are supporting continued development, continued advances in the field and in science, there’s incredible value there.”

The quality of data

Equally critical to how useful data becomes is its quality at the point of collection, something easier said than done when it’s derived from human behaviors. “A lot of times, if you were working with large-scale data, especially human-generated data sources…humans are messy and AI and machine learning often don’t love messy,” Maria says.

“They want to have a nice, orderly, cleaned, consistent format to work with. And humans [use] full grammatical sentences, and then we switch to looking on our phones, and…abbreviations, shorthand…all sorts of things. And it’s harder for AI and ML to adapt to those kinds of different switches. When you’re working with AI and data science, that first step [is] making sure that [your data] is AI-ready or in a format that your AI can take and run with.”

“It’s about having that data quality that you can trust,” adds Jennifer. “And the data quality doesn’t mean throwing everything out that looks out of line or abnormal. It means recognizing those change events or those anomalies. It means getting the data values within the appropriate range that you’re expecting…before it populates throughout your organization and pollutes your data lakes or data warehouses and things like that, because it can be so hard to go back later and try and find all those pieces and scrub it and clean it up.”

“You don’t want to over- or under-engineer things, but you do need data pipelines and you need to automate them or orchestrate them, because if you’re using that data to make important decisions or to improve customer experiences, those end results can have a significant impact on the success of your business.”

Phil shared that he likes the phrase, “Crawl, walk, run,” which means starting small and then demonstrating value before looking for the next big opportunity. He referenced a project with the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) where he was asked to help predict criminal and civil caseloads to appropriately staff almost 100 districts. He and his team analyzed the data in the DOJ’s case management system and integrated it with publicly available open-source data. “We created a data model for staffing projections and it was very successful. But the interesting thing was that it unexpectedly predicted the opioid crisis, which was several years forthcoming,” he says.

Data is the future

One of the tenets of the Autonomous Digital Enterprise is to become a Data-Driven-Business that captures, correlates, and monetizes data across the enterprise to yield high-value business cases with AI/ML while also optimizing and improving the processes of data extraction and analysis. So it makes perfect sense that people who know data best would be integral to that evolution.

“When we [talk] about citizen data scientists, to me, it just merely means providing some of the cool tools that make the analysis of information a lot easier. I think [Ph.D. skills] are always going to be completely in demand and are required, but we need to get more information and data value in the hands of the people that are making decisions,” explains Maria.

She adds that the availability of new tools, Python programming resources, and computer science open sourcing of methods, data sets, and analysis notebooks is a great way to expand data science beyond the existing research community. As Phil says, “Now, everyone is clamoring to be the new thing. And the new kid on the block is really the data engineer.”

Tune in here for the rest of the discussion and find out how our data thought leaders tied their concepts to songs by Justin Timberlake and Lizzo, and that iconic line from JAWS. And look for our upcoming research on the business value of data based on a survey of the current data practices of over 1,100 IT decision makers from around the world, coming in February 2023!

In 2015, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon called on young people around the world to “Be a global citizen. Act with passion and compassion. Help us make this world safer and more sustainable today and for the generations that will follow us. That is our moral responsibility.” As a new generation rises into the enterprise workforce, they’re taking that mission to heart. What does the new emphasis on corporate social responsibility (CSR) mean to them, and what does it mean to the companies they’ll join? How can organizations maximize their triple bottom line (TBL) of people, planet, and profit?

In a new episode of The Savvy Innovators, a Voice of America podcast series sponsored by BMC, leaders in the global CSR movement explore its evolution as a collective purpose shared by employees, customers, partners, and their communities. Wendy Rentschler, Head of Global Corporate Social Responsibility & Inclusion at BMC, and Nathaniel Comer, Founder of Sun Screen IT Foundation Charity and CEO of Sun Screen IT Ltd, offered key insights for organizations seeking to do good while doing well. Highlights of their conversation follow.

Redefining the workforce

While concepts like CSR; TBL accounting; environmental, social, and governance (ESG); and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) have been percolating for many years, they’ve only recently risen to prominence on the corporate agenda—and the priority list of both employees and consumers. “ESG has been on the radar for 20 years now, but only really innovative people saw that Millenials and Generation Z, the biggest buyers of products today, were really going to be purpose-driven,” says Wendy. Employees are also the largest investment for most businesses, making it especially important to align corporate culture with their values and expectations.

This isn’t just a matter of feel-good PR, emphasizes Nathaniel. “We say, ‘Let’s save the planet,’ but the planet’s going to be fine. We’re saving ourselves from an incredibly painful, fast set of changes.” The disproportionate effect of these changes highlights the growing intersectionality across all of these objectives.

“When you take a step back, historically excluded communities are the most adversely impacted from climate change,” Wendy points out. “What we’re trying to do is bring these communities to the table and have inclusive conversations and create belonging so we can prioritize inclusion to drive innovation.” In this sense, economic investment, empowerment, and upskilling need to go hand-in-hand. As Nathaniel says, “When you educate a woman, you educate the family.” Over time, a community can build the kind of IT skills that draw new investment, help it rise out of poverty, and achieve higher levels of prosperity, development, and autonomy.

From e-waste to urban mining and grassroots carbon reduction

The global economy already generates truly vast volumes of electronic and electrical waste each year—and it’s expected to double by mid-century. But it doesn’t have to be that way.

“In 1985, hardly anyone had a PC in their house,” says Nathaniel. “Now you’ve got a Bluetooth fridge that tells you when you’re low on milk. This over-engineered world we live in is marvelous, but it’s a little over the top.” With mines for copper, platinum, and other raw materials projected to be exhausted in the coming decades, we’ll need to turn our attention to the billions of dollars’ worth of mineral resources already lying dormant in landfills, attics, basements, and back offices.

“There’s already enough metal out there to have a completely sustainable circular economy,” says Nathaniel. “What we haven’t transitioned to is how to get those metals and identify them in the first place.” His organization is currently working with innovators who are developing ways to extract gold and other elements from discarded circuit boards. Even without such heroic measures, simply getting more use out of existing tech can have a tremendous impact. “A third of the IT Industry’s carbon footprint is end user computing. If you extend the life of a PC by just two years, it saves nearly 200 kilograms of carbon,” he adds.

The grassroots will have an essential role to play in the shift to a circular economy, says Wendy. “Empowering people to understand the power of their consumerism can help make these changes. We’re already seeing it in the ESG movement that’s happening now. This would not be a thing if the market wasn’t dictating it.”

Employees can play a similar forcing function in the workplace. “Our talent acquisition team and every hiring manager I talk to tell me that candidates are asking about DEI and sustainability in every interview,” reports Wendy. “They want to know if you are a purpose-driven organization.” Meeting that expectation is becoming critical to building an organization’s human capital. “Your ability to retain your team members is extremely important. If you have high turnover, you’re not able to engage your employees. That lowers your ESG score and puts you more at risk of being overtaken by a more innovative competitor.”

Sustainability drives, volunteer days, and other employee initiatives can pay dividends for both the community and the business. As Nathaniel puts it, “Your business will have an advantage if you’re getting your people to be inspired and work in ways that they would never normally do in a really human organic way.”

Accountability—not greenwashing

“Everyone’s heard the term ‘greenwashing’ now,” says Nathaniel. “There’s this massive startup industry of sustainability ratings. But reporting has to be transparent.” This includes a willingness to acknowledge where you’re falling short, not just hyping your successes. “No big company is ever going to have no issues. There are going to be mistakes made along the way, but on the whole, there’s a wonderful trend in actually being really accountable and disclosing complete transparency. It’s all out there, and it’s very quick to see which company is actually telling the truth with demonstrable statistics.”

Wendy points to tried-and-true best practices and frameworks such as EcoVadis, Sustainalytics, and The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) as the best way to approach ESG reporting. “The industry as a whole is going through a maturity model. Everyone’s always doing a new thing, but stick to the people that have been doing it for a very long time.”

To hear more of Wendy and Nathaniel’s conversation, including the role of employee resource groups (ERGs), the global benefits of increased access to education, and examples of companies and practices at the forefront of CSR, listen to the whole podcast here: “Changing the Game through Corporate Social Responsibility.”

Bringing digital tools into the physical world was only the beginning. Now, innovative companies are blending digital and physical into a single, seamless experience—and even making it possible to step fully into entirely digital environments. Augmented reality (AR) technologies superimpose digital information over a real-world view. Virtual reality (VR) systems replace the user’s sight with a synthetic virtual environment. Immersive metaverses allow personal digital avatars to engage in actions and interactions limited only by the programmer’s imagination. With use cases like training, warehouse work, and data visualization already gaining traction, we’ve only begun to glimpse the possibilities for these new digital realities.

The latest episode of The Savvy Innovators, a new Voice of America podcast series sponsored by BMC, explores the current state and future prospects of AR, VR, and the metaverse. Eric Anderson, AVP of Innovation at BMC; Rob Petrosino, Head of Emerging Tech & Innovation Division at PeakActivity; and Ofer Baharav, CEO and Head of Product at Villa, share what they’re seeing, what gets them excited—and what’s on the digital horizon. Highlights of their conversation follow.

Igniting a new boom

As a new wave of VR headsets surge to the top of holiday wish lists, and companies from Google to Ford weave extended reality technologies into their business operations, the AR/VR space is heating up—fast. “In the next four to five years, we’re about to hit the dot-com boom cycle for AR/VR,” says Eric. Think of the 1990s, when brick-and-mortar companies made their first tentative steps into the internet with simple, informational use cases before a new generation of born-digital companies unleashed new levels of innovation. “Now we’re seeing a lot of creative minds going, ‘Well what can I do? What kind of businesses can be built in the metaverse, in AR, in VR?’ It’s not just about building a digital presence for an existing business, but starting to see what the future can look like.”

“We are 100 percent in the early stages of the technology,” agrees Rob. “It’s only going to get lighter, faster, less dependent on existing hardware and software, and even more focused on experience. With the rollout of 5G and 6G, it’s going to accelerate even more. The more forward-thinking you can be as an executive or an individual within an organization, the more you’re going to lay the foundation for the future that is quickly approaching.”

Ofer adds a note of urgency. “Right now, it’s early days, but the early adopters have a huge leg up, like Accenture, for example. They’re taking this very, very seriously. It feels like a great time to get started with light activities like standups or experientials. You don’t want to try to do everything at once, but if you’re not in there now, it’s soon going to be too late.”

Real-world use cases emerge

Incorporating data into the physical environment with AR can have a dramatic impact. “Data visualization combines a lot of back-end systems into a real-world, near-real-time feed to a headset that will ultimately look like a pair of glasses,” explains Rob. “You retain the ability to see the world around you, which is vital when you talk about these use cases.” Imagine a tech at a vertical farming facility who can view the temperature, moisture, nutrient levels, and potential issues of each plant she passes, or a warehouse worker who can see the location of his next seven pickups superimposed over the aisles, sequenced for optimal efficiency.

AR has also been shown to nearly double the understanding of a training exercise. “You’re able to retain the information for a longer period of time,” says Eric. For a medical student using a dummy to train for surgery, digital experiences can present unexpected variables and complications that might be difficult or impossible to simulate in a purely physical exercise.

As digital transformation drives data volumes to dizzying heights, VR offers new ways for users to make sense of information at scale and speed. “As anybody who has worked with big data sets, huge machine learning models, and things like that knows, you can’t get your arms around it and really massage and understand data using a traditional 2D screen, keyboard, and mouse,” says Eric.

“I want to make interacting with data as easy as picking up a pen. Can I use my hands to work with my data, not necessarily my keyboard? Can I envision a data pipeline that’s 3,000 steps long, be immersed in it, see its problems, grab it, and put more data into it? Give us a couple of years and you’re going to be surprised by what you see.”

The dark side of AR/VR

While there’s ample excitement around AR and VR, the vast amount of user data these systems collect makes many people wary. “Personal privacy and PII [personally identifiable information] are not being paid enough attention,” notes Ofer. “The potential for false representation or identity theft remains a concern.” Real-time information about user location, behavior, and activity will go far beyond what’s currently possible with smartphones, creating new temptations for data mining, intrusive advertising, and outright fraud.

“On the plus side, it seems like subscriptions and ownership models have the potential to replace ad-based businesses that rely on selling information,” he adds. “So, although the dark side is trolling with false representation, the positive is that businesses will drive less from the need to sell private information, and instead simply charge for value creation.”

Meanwhile, new digital realities may play a key role in the evolution of a more sustainable future of work. “Think about the energy that went into that massive building downtown. Think about the energy used to drive there or back,” says Ofer. While Zoom in recent years has hinted at the potential of remote meetings and collaboration, the metaverse can provide the deeper level of engagement that people crave.

“With video, you don’t get presence. You don’t get to be with people. We are human. We are meant to touch, shakes hands, smile, and be there,” he explains. “There’s a long way to go until we reach parity, but we’re going there very fast. It’s not a theory anymore. Thousands of people are doing it right now.”

Coming attractions

While the form factor of AR/VR and metaverse hardware has posed challenges to date—with large, costly, often clunky headsets the price of entry to new digital worlds—falling price points and disappearing wires are already broadening accessibility and acceptance. Before long, we may even see equipment more analogous to traditional eyewear—and not just eyeglasses. “I’ve seen prototypes of contact lenses that you put in and you don’t even realize you’re wearing them, and neither do other people,” says Eric. “Getting rid of the skull-crushing VR headsets—that’s coming, absolutely.”

Evolving use cases will be similarly eye-popping. “VR, AR, and the metaverse have the capacity to really evolve us,” says Ofer. “We’re upgrading the environment so that we are living in superhuman territory to maximize our potential.”

To hear more of Rob, Eric, and Ofer’s conversation, including their views on life-like avatars, business and consumer adoption timelines, and the democratization of development, listen to the whole podcast: “AR vs. VR In The Enterprise: The Art of The Possible!”

We hear a lot these days about the urgency of digital transformation—how it’s an existential necessity for every organization, and the faster, the better. But what do we really mean by that term? Is it simply a matter of delivering new digital services to customers and employees? What about recycling existing physical infrastructure to accelerate innovation? Using environmental, social, and governance (ESG) projects to foster creative thinking? Making mobility and automation key elements of your talent recruitment efforts? And how do you measure the impact of such diverse initiatives to make sure they’re more than just interesting ideas?

The Savvy Innovators, a new Voice of America podcast series sponsored by BMC, explores how enterprises can embrace tech-enabled disruption, and continuously adapt and evolve to achieve and sharpen their competitive edge. In a recent episode, Bill Corrigan, VP of Technology Strategy and Advocacy at BMC, and Surya Panditi, Former CEO of Enel X North America, joined host Bonnie D. Graham to share their views and firsthand experiences with digital transformation across companies and industries. Highlights of their conversation follow.

The digital transformation imperative

In a business environment where disruption is the new normal, organizations are under pressure to optimize existing technologies while driving innovation. They have to meet the expectations of a new generation of talent, including a commitment to ESG, while leveraging data to make better decisions, improve performance, and reduce operational risk. It’s quite a list—and the margin for error is small. As Bill observes, “Whether you want to transform your business with technology or not, it’s going to be forced upon you. If you don’t get it right, you really can screw up not only your digital assets but your entire company.”

Reusing rather than reinventing

Digital transformation doesn’t have to be driven entirely by net-new innovations. Surya and Bill discuss examples of organizations finding ways to drive new forms of value with existing investments, including at Surya’s former company. “When you’re looking at building renewable-energy-[based], utility-scale plants, there’s the actual generation that you have to build, but you also have to connect it to [existing] transmission systems and distribution systems,” Surya explains. “Very often it is that interconnection that tends to be both challenging from an environmental, regulatory perspective as well as from a financial perspective.” To solve this problem, Enel X decided to transform its existing fossil-fuel-based-generation plants and associated substations to accommodate new clean-energy technologies.

“Obviously, wherever you can reuse technology or existing investments, that’s better than having to reinvent the wheel,” notes Bill, who cited a similar example from a large military installation. While organizations often think of digital innovation in terms of advanced technologies and ambitious implementations, smaller investments can also deliver exceptional returns. “A tiny bit of technology addition in the form of data normalization and data integration was able to save this particular military base about eight million dollars a year while providing much better service for the people living and working there. It paid for itself in a few months,” he says.

Making ESG measurable—and inspirational

ESG objectives have quickly become a top-level priority for modern organizations. It’s a broad umbrella, encompassing everything from sustainability and socially conscious decision-making to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), with a common theme of going beyond technology transformations to necessitate cultural evolution, as well. “A lot of ESG is about transparency—showing people why it’s important,” says Bill.

Measurement can be a big part of this cultural change. “Measurement is important because you can say everything you want and give it lip service, but at the end [of the day], people are being held accountable,” says Surya. “Companies are being held accountable for what they’re actually doing, which is a marked difference to the kind of greenwashing that was happening a few years ago.”

Establishing ESG as a core corporate value can also provide new channels to stimulate employee creativity and problem-solving. During Surya’s tenure at Enel X, a young leader in the company’s Boston office launched a hackathon that drew a number of interesting projects beyond the usual improvements to existing products and services. One team proposed to reduce the environmental impact of their daily lunches. “They came up with a set of steps that we would take in order to reduce trash, increase reusable containers, [and] use compostable forks and spoons and knives. They went around to many of the restaurants in the neighborhood and convinced them to reduce their trash footprint,” he recalls. By encouraging employees to think outside the box—and even outside the company itself—companies can foster a more fertile environment for business innovation.

Rethinking employee experience

An ESG focus can also be a powerful tool for recruiting, retaining, and engaging a competitive workforce. Surya describes his Enel X workforce as having been highly mission-driven. “I will tell you the fact that they were working on clean technology meant more to them than necessarily getting the next bonus or raise.”

Bill sees great value in allowing more flexibility and mobility in where and how people can work, as well as increasing automation both at the manufacturing level and in the office to create a better employee experience. Both are key to hiring a new born-digital generation of talent. “If you can attract and retain those younger people, you are more likely to have a higher EBITDA than others in your category,” he observes. “Oftentimes, this falls back to data and being able to measure your efforts.”

Data, data, data

Again and again, Bill and Surya circled back to the central role of data in digital transformation. “People tend to think about digital transformation, data analytics, and machine learning as technologies we can apply to specific technical business problems, but if you take a step back, it’s across all industries, all functions, all types of outcomes. We need to do a good job of not only tapping into the data but analyzing it, coming up with insights, presenting options, and then measuring results, whether it’s employee engagement or making a process more efficient,” says Surya.

To date, companies have been falling far short in this effort. Bill cited a recent study showing that only a tiny fraction of the data produced in 2020 was actually utilized and analyzed in 2021 to make any changes to business results. “The idea is that we’re capturing a lot of data but we’re not operationalizing or turning it into valuable business insights or bottom line,” he says.

To hear Bill and Surya’s recommendations on solving the digital transformation data challenge, along with their thoughts on topics from robots and ethical artificial intelligence (AI) to the definition of success, listen to the whole podcast here: “Driving Business Results with Digital Transformation.”

That’s a wrap on day two of BMC Exchange 2021! We hope you were able to join us for another fantastic day of exciting and enlightening discussions from your global peers, innovators, and technology leaders, but if you weren’t, no worries! We have the highlights for you, and every panel is now streaming on exchange.bmc.com.

This year’s event is all about data—customer, IT performance, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and more, and our panelists weighed in with guidance and real-world examples of how they’re using data efficiently to achieve the agility, customer centricity, and actionable insights required to become an Autonomous Digital Enterprise and operationalize their most powerful asset to become a Data-Driven Business.

Today started with a fireside chat between BMC Chief Revenue Officer, Jason Andrew, and Shark Tank star and CEO/Founder of FUBU, Daymond John. The two discussed all the ways that data has led Daymond to imagine, invent, and innovate time and time again and how he uses data-driven insights to be the incredible visionary and entrepreneur he is today. Register now and cozy up for the replay of this fireside chat that you don’t want to miss.

Following the fireside chat, we had so many other great panels, from workload automation to operations management and everything in between. Check out a few with direct links below, or feel free to register now (it’s free!) and catch all of the Day 1 (roundup here) and Day 2 panels on demand.

Fireside Chat with CyberMak’s Tasnim Pithapurwala

Today featured a great live session in our BMC Innovation Labs Salon. CyberMAK CTO Tasnim Pithapurwala and BMC’s Sam Lakkundi discussed co-innovating technology to deliver game changing value for your enterprise or customer.

“The BMC Innovations Labs Team – Hat’s off to you guys! You have been the most collaborative with a partner. You have made our journey so much simpler. Every time there was a challenge you all have come up with a solution working with us and the customer as a team. So, that has made it possible, that has made this all come together.”

—Tasnim Pithapurwala, CTO, CyberMAK Information Systems 

To view the full panel, click here (it’s free to register)!

Operating Business Workflows at Peak Performance with Better Insights

Yesterday BMC announced an exciting new addition to Control-M called Workflow Insights, and Amir Banai, Senior Product Manager at BMC, had the opportunity to show it off during this session.

Driven by workflow telemetry data, Control-M Workflow Insights is a new collection of data-rich dashboards that offer observable insights showing how workflow changes and trends impact the delivery and service level agreements (SLAs) of business services over time.

“[Businesses] across many industries [have] been asked to do the same amount of work, but do it faster. And that requires analyzing workflows to understand…what adjustments can be made so that you can now do the same amount of work in a shorter amount of time.”

—Basil Faruqui, Principal Solutions Marketing Manager, BMC

To read more about this new offering, check out this blog and watch Amir show off three of the set of eight highly interactive dashboards by registering and watching the full demo here. 

It Can’t Be Done: A Story of 15 Years of Automation in Telstra

Behind the logo of Australia’s iconic Telstra are many stories of innovation and adaption. This story is about one team which grew from humble beginnings to performing over 35+ million orchestrations per month, improving cross-functional automation, operations, and the customer and engineering experience.

Listen in to Roy Partington, Technology Product Owner, and Bryce Howie, Group Principal, at Telstra, as they take us through their 15-year journey from the original challenges they faced, roadblocks, lessons learned, and their successes.

“With every experience comes lessons…and I think through this 15-year story so far we’ve tried to distill down a few of the key learnings that we’ve had along the way. And they almost turn into principles for us to guide the way we approach the work we do.”

—Bryce Howie, Group Principal, Telstra

To view the full panel, click here (it’s free to register)!

How Humana Built a Modern Mainframe-Inclusive DevOps Toolchain for Increased ROI

Many organizations have realized that the mainframe systems their companies have relied on for years are not only a capable platform for today, but also for the future. Watch Andrew Foster, Director of DevOps, and Gaurav Jaju, Application Architect for Humana, discuss how their organization selected a modern mainframe development environment that enhanced the developer experience, improved business outcomes, and drove return on investment.

“The intention here is to just show how the BMC AMI DevX stack fits together to form this ecosystem and how we’ve integrated it with our other DevOps product suites across our broad ecosystem…Humana has almost every technology stack at play you can think of within our ecosystem. And so, stitching these things together and providing a very streamlined experience for the engineers is something that we’re really passionate about in the enterprise engineering enablement team…We think and believe that happy engineers equal productive engineers, right? So we want our engineers to come into work, be excited about the toolset that they’re using, and be able to do their job in as frictionless way as possible.”

—Andrew Foster, Director of DevOps, Humana

To view the full panel, click here (it’s free to register)!

Get Maximum File Transfer Visibility, Control, and Integration

File transfers are critical to virtually every business service you deliver. Using separate products to manage file transfers and related application workflows can be risky and complicated, and negatively impact your critical business services. In this session, Robby Dick, Lead Solution Marketing Manager at BMC, talks to Jason Garner, Manager of Workload Automation and Global Cloud Operations at Finastra, about how he and his team handle the automation of batch processing file movements and other automations across Finastra.

“Control-M…it’s one solution that gives us the dashboard and the monitoring, and then the ability to roll it out easily, and we can provide secure access to other areas so that they can look into it…It just really expanded our ability to cover more areas, but with a smaller team, a smaller overhead, it’s all in one spot.”

—Jason Garner, Manager, Workload Automation and Global Cloud Operations, Finastra

Register for free to watch the full session here and find out how Control-M can give you instant visibility and control over all your internal and external file transfers.

Solutions Roadmaps

BMC Exchange wouldn’t be complete without showcasing some of the new innovations coming soon across each of our solution areas. With a roadmap session for each Control-M/BMC Helix Control-M, BMC Helix ITOM, and BMC Helix ITSM, our product managers take you through what’s coming next for these solutions in the coming years. In the BMC AMI/BMC AMI DevX roadmap, we focus on new innovations and capabilities from the BMC AMI DevX and BMC AMI portfolio with a few AppDev awards given to our customers modernizing the mainframe. Check out each roadmap session to learn what’s next and new for BMC products.

We have one more day left of BMC Exchange 2021. Be sure to register for Day 3, and if you’ve missed any sessions from Day 1 or Day 2 register here to watch on demand today.

That’s a wrap on day one of BMC Exchange 2021! We hope you were able to join us for a fantastic day of exciting and enlightening discussions from your global peers, innovators, and technology leaders, but if you weren’t, no worries! We have the highlights for you, and every panel is now streaming on exchange.bmc.com.

This year’s event is all about data—customer, IT performance, Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and more, and our panelists weighed in with guidance and real-world examples of how they’re using data efficiently to achieve the agility, customer centricity, and actionable insights required to become an Autonomous Digital Enterprise (ADE) and operationalize their most powerful asset to become a Data-Driven Business.

The event opened with a keynote from BMC Chief Executive Officer Ayman Sayed, who shared, “At BMC, we are on our own journey to becoming an ADE with DataOps…and [we have] adopted our own expansive data strategy…collecting data across all functions and streams. [We] have no shortage of data! We are so digitized that we collect and store lots of it [and] with historical analysis and predictive analytics, we can make continuous improvement while focusing on innovation!”

BMC’s Chief Product Officer, Ali Siddiqui, and Chief Technology Officer, Ram Chakravarti, also spoke. “Every organization has technology solutions in play that support the path to an ADE, and we are here to help you accelerate your journey with differentiated capabilities across our portfolio of offerings [including] enterprise service management, operational management, data services (from mainframe to the cloud), and the Control-M automation platform,” said Siddiqui.

Chakravarti added, “We are working on numerous DataOps innovations that will fulfill your aspirations to become a Data-Driven-Businesses [and] are committed to being your innovation preferred partner throughout this journey. We are also ruthlessly pursuing organic product innovations to manage cloud-native and new architectures, edge computing, areas of DevOps, automation, artificial intelligence for operations (AIOps), and observability.”

To view the full keynote, click here (it’s free to register)!

Then it was time for a lively question and answer session with Chakravarti, who gave attendees a peek inside the BMC Innovation Labs Salon before segueing to his panel, “DataOps for Value Realization in Data & Analytics Transformations,” on why traditional data and analytics approaches have fallen short and how DataOps can rapidly turn new insights into fully operationalized production deliverables that unlock maximum business value.

“Considering that DataOps is based on application of DevOps best practices, it should come as no surprise that collaboration and automation are critical to the success of DataOps,” he explained. “Multiple roles and interactions are required to successfully deploy a data analytics use case; it’s critical to get them right. Success requires extensive collaboration across the data management ecosystem between data managers (such as data owners, data stewards, data architects, and data engineers) and data consumers (who include data scientists, business owners, power users, and end users) like never before.”

To view the full panel, click here (it’s free to register)!

Here are highlights from some of the rest of today’s panels, with featured quotes from each:

Delivering Better Services through Digital Workplace Engagements

In the session, we learned how Monash University, a modern, global, research-intensive university serving Australia and the Indo-Pacific, is delivering service excellence and interactions through a modern Digital Workplace.

“The pandemic… accelerated what Monash was already doing. We have a global workforce…based at our campuses [and] in a remote city somewhere…so we really needed to make sure that our footprint was as digital as it possibly could be, so that our colleagues can be serviced from wherever they are at whatever hour they’re working.”

—Matt Carmichael, IT Director, Monash University

To view the full panel, click here (it’s free to register)!

Powering DataOps with Control-M Workflow Orchestration

This session demonstrated how data scientists and engineers can streamline the delivery of data-centric digital services by accessing Control-M’s production-ready orchestration of cloud services with Python, the preferred programming language among data professionals.

“Complex data pipelines are a challenge; making sure they get into production with all the governance and compliance required even more so. So, what we’re trying to do is provide data engineers and data scientists with a very familiar environment, which is very easy for them to use, by providing the Python client so there’s a familiar language. This will enable you to take those complex pipelines and put them into the framework of Control-M, allowing you to exploit all of Control-M’s governance and compliance capabilities in production while ensuring a friction-free experience for all your technical users.”

—Guy Eden,  AVP, Product Management BMC

To view the full panel, click here (it’s free to register)!

Solving the Service Paradox: Quality Innovations while Being “Fast and Furious”

BMC’s David Schmidt spoke with Videotron’s Trung Quach about the impact intelligent automation can have on creating and deploying innovative services.

“[With more people] doing technology automation, we focus back on, ‘If you would do it manually, how would you do it in your process?’ And we would automate that process…We can open all the tickets. We can close the tickets, we can double check whatever a human can double check, like you would do it manually. And that’s how now we don’t have incidents on those things.”

—Trung Quach, Senior Director of IT Infrastructure and Operations, Videotron

To view the full panel, click here (it’s free to register)!

Unleash Employee Success Through Self-Service

Featuring Maple Leaf Foods, this session explored how to establish knowledge management strategies to help provide employees with great self-service and eliminate the time and effort wasted searching for the right answers.

“We’re lucky to have a UX team. We invested heavily in that. We started with the [knowledge] articles. They used to proofread it for us, ensure their simple design is simple. The colors are inviting, friendly, and straight to the point…You can’t have a knowledge article that is eight pages long and expect the user to go through it, or even the agent…And we started to build this culture where more teams have those individuals [who] can create those knowledge articles. We still hold the last button to publish [and] it seems to be working very well for us.”

—Ali Beeai, Director IS Technical Services and Support, Maple Leaf Foods

To view the full panel, click here (it’s free to register)!

AISM: Deliver Agile Service Experiences to Speed Innovation

During this presentation by Martin Johansson, strategic product manager at Ericsson, we learned how Ericsson has evolved and re-invented its enterprise service management practices, leveraging platform thinking, convergence of service management and operations, and artificial intelligence and automation technology.

“We have over 17 million page views so far this year, and we’re processing over 1.7 million cases…We’ve processed over 1.2 median service requests and work orders. And half of them are actually automated today.”

—Martin Johansson, Strategic Product Manager, Ericsson

To view the full panel, click here (it’s free to register)!

Enabling SREs with AIOps and AISM

In this panel, BMC’s Craig Sisson, Greg Bukowski, and Jeremy Hamilton shared insights into how AIOps and artificial intelligence for service management (AISM) can help site reliability engineers (SREs) succeed.

“If you think about an embedded SRE, [they] span, the entire business service, all the different platforms, all the different pieces. And they may not have extensive mainframe knowledge, at least not from a developmental perspective. And then they’re right in the middle of the problem solving…so it’s important to have…easy-to-use, modern tools…to enable that SRE to take a look at what did happen and why did it happen? And are there ways [to] make sure this doesn’t happen again?”

—Jeremy Hamilton, Technology Solutions Director, BMC

“Intelligent automation is leveraging artificial intelligence to determine what’s the best automation or where are there automation opportunities, where else can they automatically trigger automation…a big first step is elevating your thought process into a policy approach. If you can get people thinking about business KPIs and observability into your service level objective, it’s the first step of moving into a more intelligent automation space of having policy-driven automation based on business visibility and observability metrics.”

—Greg Bukowski, Technology Solutions Director, BMC

To view the full panel, click here (it’s free to register)!

Prioritizing Inclusion, Driving Innovation

During this session, BMC’s Wendy Rentschler and Allison Cramer discussed the importance of building an innovative company culture that is centered on fostering inclusion and collaboration.

“People that are in dominant groups or have not experienced microaggressions [don’t] realize the full-time job it is to mask what you’re saying [or] think about how you might be perceived when you say something. It is exhausting and it does take away some of that mental capacity that could be used towards helping build a product line or a go-to-market strategy.”

—Wendy Rentschler, Director of Corporate Social Responsibility, BMC

“[An employee candidate] liked the idea that if she were to come to the table as a female leader [at BMC], she wouldn’t be by herself. And that she wouldn’t always be in a room where she was the only woman or the woman checking a box in that way.”

—Allison Cramer, VP of Solutions Marketing Management, BMC

To view the full panel, click here (it’s free to register)!

To see more of today’s panels, visit exchange.bmc.com, where every panel is streaming live—and for free. We’d also love to have you join us on Thursday for another day of exciting insights!

BMC Exchange 2020 Day 1 Recap

BMC Exchange 2020 was a resounding success. A huge thank you to our customers, sponsors, partners, and employees who joined us for our first virtual BMC Exchange. If you weren’t able to attend the sessions live, or you’re interested in a refresh, you can watch all of them on-demand now at exchange.bmc.com. To whet your appetite, here are a few highlights from Day 1.

Capitalize on the Unexpected: Your Winning Path as an Autonomous Digital Enterprise.

Featuring: BMC CEO Ayman Sayed, SAP COO Christine Schöneweis, and Park Place CEO Chris Adams

Our Day 1 keynote was headlined by Ayman Sayed, President and CEO of BMC, who shared how today’s tumultuous global markets and rapid technology advances can turn a potential disruption into a major competitive advantage for Autonomous Digital Enterprises (ADEs) across all industries. He talked with Park Place CEO Chris Adams and SAP COO Christine Schöneweis about how your current IT investments are the foundation for the innovative intelligence-driven solutions that can help you become an ADE. Ayman also shared new and exciting solution announcements and a few great customer success stories. Don’t miss your chance to watch this session on-demand!

Is Your Organization Ready: ADE Competitive Index

Featuring: Herb VanHook, member of the BMC CTOs office, and Carl Lehmann, senior research analyst at 451 Research, a part of S&P Global.

If you’ve been following BMC for a while—and we hope you have—you’ve likely  heard about our Autonomous Digital Enterprise (ADE) vision. While we talk about the need to become an ADE over the next five-plus years,  some organizations are already embracing parts of the vision now, according to an early peek at the new ADE Index developed by 451 Research, a part of S&P global. Among the highlights touted by Carl Lehmann, senior analyst:

• 41 percent of respondents said their organizations currently have dedicated lines of business that operate as distinct digital business domains to create and bring to market digital products and services, with 90 percent of those surveyed calling it an important, very important, or essential differentiator from their competition
• 39.4 percent of surveyed organizations are automating business and IT processes broadly across their operations today, with 86 percent of respondents saying it is an important, very important, or essential differentiator
• 43.8 percent of respondents say they are executing within several lines of business a data-driven approach to decisions and operations, with 56.4 percent saying they will scale out their data-driven initiatives across their enterprises in the coming two years.

There will be a lot more content coming on the ADE Index soon, but if you missed the session, you can watch it now on-demand.

The “Next and New” for Every Autonomous Digital Enterprise

Featuring: Ali Siddiqui, BMC Chief Product Officer, and Ram Chakravarti, BMC Chief Technology Officer

The ADE vision does not only apply to our customers; it’s a vision for BMC’s future as well. In this session, Ali Siddiqui, BMC CPO, and Ram Chakravarti, CTO, outlined some of the innovating product work being done here at BMC. One of the highlights was the announcement of Ali’s vision for the ADE Foundation.

The duo also chatted about:

• The new BMC Helix Control-M—a software as a service (SaaS) version of the Control-M you know and love
• The role of BMC AMI in the enterprise (hint: it’s not only mainframe)
• Projects underway in the BMC Innovation Labs

Definitely watch this session if you want to hear how the ADE is coming to life inside the walls of BMC.

Data/Analytics Orchestration with Control-M for COVID-19 Tracking and Recovery

Featuring: Mike Badal, BI/analytics manager, and Fausto Gonzalez, senior data warehousing specialist, both from Tampa General Hospital

As COVID-19 has become the talk of the world, we were glad to have Mike and Fausto join BMC Exchange to share their timely and uplifting success story. They discussed how Tampa General Hospital successfully employed analytics as part of a region-wide effort to track COVID-19 ICU and hospitalization rates. With SQL Server as its primary database platform and SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) as the primary extract, transform, load (ETL) tool, the hospital was able to get near real-time lab ETL data feeds from the hospital lab system for COVID-19 tests.

Control-M from BMC provided the team with the data review processes it needed to make informed decisions. By gathering usage and inventory data around critical personal protective equipment (PPE), the team helped ensure reserves and plan for purchases with forecasting models and what-if scenarios. With Control-M’s visualizations and Gantt display, the team was able to understand and fine-tune complex reloading scheduling requirements during the morning “rush hours” when data surges occur. The team was also able to identify areas for performance improvements in its real-time COVID apps.

As part of a network of more than 50 hospitals across 13 counties, Tampa General is now accessing, processing, and analyzing the critical data it needs to help ensure robust care during the healthcare crisis. We are proud to partner with this team and encourage you to check out this session to learn more.

Enterprise DevOps Transformation Case Study: Lloyds Banking Group

Featuring: Reg Wilkinson, Agile and DevOps lead, and Jon Richards, mainframe lead, both from Lloyds Banking Group

This year at BMC Exchange, we included a DevOps Leadership track specific to our DevOps loyalists. Reg Wilkinson and Jon Richards from Lloyds Banking Group shared their digital transformation journey and tips and tricks for success. Over the past few years, Lloyds Banking Group has invested heavily in driving the adoption of Agile Development and DevOps practices across its business to strategically modernize its digital service capabilities and align with customer expectations. A few pieces of wisdom they imparted:

• Be ok with imperfection, just get started!
• Share the knowledge across all the teams in formal or informal sessions; build communication systems
• Momentum is everything, nurture the spark and enthusiasm on your team
• Share your successes and results with management
• The mainframe is just another platform, so don’t discount it

If you’re a DevOps expert, or novice, watch this session to learn more from the pros who’ve been there and done that.

Here are a few more:

Innovation Through Automation: The Game Changers: Innovation means you must constantly look for new ways of doing things. The more you can quickly and flawlessly execute, the better the ROI you’ll earn, which leads to more investment and innovation. Automation is an essential component to all of this. Learn how automation-driven actionability is a true game changer for service and operations management.

Control-M Updates and Roadmap: Learn what’s new and coming down the road for Control-M, directly from the product leaders.

BMC Helix Updates and Roadmap: Predictive IT & AIOps: Join us as our product leaders share what’s new and upcoming for BMC Helix.

We had so many great conversations, it was hard to choose which sessions to showcase. Luckily, you can view every session when you register for free at exchange.bmc.com. Other can’t miss sessions from Day 1 include:

• Barriers to Becoming an Autonomous Digital Enterprise
• Integrating Dev and Ops with Control-M
• Predictive IT and AIOps: Critical for Experience Success
• The Good, the Bad, and the Complacent: Mainframe Security Practices from the Real World

BMC Exchange 2020 Day 2 Recap

BMC Exchange 2020 was held live (virtually) October 20^th-22^nd. “This year’s event was our most successful Exchange yet, as we delivered the foundation for our customers, partners, and more, to start their Autonomous Digital Enterprise journey today and thrive in the future,” says BMC CMO Saar Shwartz.

If you weren’t able to attend BMC Exchange 2020 live, or you’re interested in a refresh, you can watch all of them on-demand now at exchange.bmc.com. With interactive sessions spread across two half days, we’ve split the highlights into two blogs. You can review the highlights from Day 1 here. For highlights from Day 2, keep reading.

Winners and Losers of the 2020 Race to Digital Transformation

Featuring: David Kirkpatrick, Founder & Editor-in-Chief of Techonomy, Drew Ianni, Founder & Chairman of CDX, and Ram Chakravarti, Chief Technology Officer at BMC

Digital transformation has been a well-worn topic for years. Everyone said they were doing it, but the pace was slowed. What’s the rush? The global COVID-19 pandemic put those digital transformation plans into overdrive. Suddenly, everyone got the message—simultaneously. So, who grabbed the opportunity by the horns and who struggled?

Our all-star panel tackled that discussion. They talked about how to innovate to seize on new opportunities born out of the pandemic, and the importance of continuing to innovate while optimizing current business operations. We highly recommend watching this panel discussion on-demand.

CEO Corner

Featuring Ayman Sayed, CEO of BMC, and Jesper Andersen, CEO of Infoblox

Ever want to be a fly on the wall during a conversation between technical execs? This is your chance. BMC CEO Ayman Sayed sat down with Jesper Andersen, CEO of Infoblox, to discuss navigating the current business climate, how to bring innovation to life, and where they’re prioritizing investments. Particularly of interest is the discussion on the hot IPO market, the funding still happening across tech, and where they’re seeing the biggest risks. Channel your inner executive, suits optional (sweatpants encouraged), and hear from the experts.

Control-M: New Release Overview

Featuring: Ram Chakravarti, CTO at BMC; Gur Steif, President of Digital Business Automation at BMC; Guy Eden, product manager at BMC; and, Karol Smeczechowski, vice president of research & development for Control-M

During the opening keynote on Day 1, BMC CEO Ayman Sayed introduced BMC Helix Control-M, the new software as a service (SaaS) version of the venerable Control-M workflow orchestration solution. This panel, which featured BMC’s CTO and senior Control-M leadership, delved further into the new release, highlighting its features and deployment model. Among the topics discussed:

• Differences between Control-M on-premises and the new BMC Helix Control-M
• Specific use cases for BMC Helix Control-M
• The advantages of hosting on Amazon Web Services (AWS)

For customers looking to manage complex workloads in a hybrid-cloud environment, watch this panel discussion to learn how BMC Helix Control-M can help.

Moving From On-Premises to SaaS: Insights from Experience

Featuring: Joe Heyer, global program manager at BMC, Mildo Stolk, global IT manager at Huisman Equipment B.V, and Russell Thurgood, assistant director of service management at The University of Kansas Health System

Moving from on-premises to software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions is a key part of an organization’s digital transformation. In this session, BMC’s Joe Heyer spoke with two BMC customers about their experience with a SaaS migration. Huisman Equipment B.V. is fairly new to migrating and Mildo Stolk, the global IT manager from Huisman, shared insights on how they initially moved to a SaaS setup for select business functions. Based on that initial success, Stolk said they’ve had requests from other business units to move their applications, too. At the University of Kansas Health System, SaaS has been in place for several years, and is prevalent across the organization, not only on BMC applications, but throughout its app environment.

In addressing challenges, both Stolk and Russell Thurgood from University of Kansas Health System agreed that training and documentation are very important, especially as you roll out upgrades and customizations. The biggest benefit both cited was the out-of-the-box ease of use. Moving to SaaS meant that they didn’t have to invest in the hardware, spend time on an installation, or worry about the back end.

To hear more from this comprehensive discussion, and understand the challenges and benefits of moving on-premises to SaaS, view this session at exchange.bmc.com.

Think Your Mainframe Can’t Be Hacked? It Can. See It Live.

Featuring: Christopher Perry, lead product manager for BMC AMI Security at BMC, and Chad Rikansrud, director of North American Consulting Services at BMC

With its historical place in the IT world, the mainframe might be considered impenetrable, but our BMC experts prefer to say that it’s the most securable. Yes, it actually can be hacked, but there are measures you can take to prevent that from happening. To set the stage, Chad Rikansrud, director of North American Consulting Services at BMC, defined a hack in very simple terms as, “Anytime you’re using resources in a way they weren’t meant to be used.”

He explained that can mean anything from stealing credentials to accessing an open port on a web server for a remote connection. He said it doesn’t even have to be a super complex code vulnerability. It could be as easy as guessing someone’s password. From there, it’s not just about what they access, but rather what they do once they get in. He then demonstrated hacking into a mainframe through a common vulnerability with an off-the-shelf tool.

To watch this hack, learn more about recent hacks in the news, and services and software BMC can provide to help protect your mainframe from hackers, check this session out.

Here are a few more:

DevOps Transformation: Metrics That Show Business Value: Transforming a 40-year old company from Waterfall to Agile, implementing DevOps, and committing to CI/CD is, to say the least, a journey. Along that journey, baselining, collecting, and analyzing valid metrics are key to identifying bottlenecks in the value stream so adjustments can be made quickly and continuously. Learn how a company increased time spent on innovation, reduced escaped defects, and improved MTTR, and importantly, how measuring KPIs proved that Agile and DevOps really do provide a business advantage.

BMC Helix ITSM Updates and Roadmap: AI ITSM: As business evolves, so do our solutions. Get the inside scoop on the latest and upcoming innovations for BMC Helix ITSM, directly from the product leaders.

Compuware Updates and Roadmap: This year, Compuware joined the BMC family. Learn about the latest product updates and get a sneak peek of what’s coming next.

You can access all sessions highlighted above on-demand when you register for free at exchange.bmc.com. Other can’t miss sessions from Day 2:

• Deliver Rapid Innovation and Compelling Services
• How AI Can Elevate Your Service and Operations Management
• Building a Better Software Delivery Platform
• Why Counting on Audits Could Be Putting Your Mainframe at Risk

We are already looking forward to seeing you at next year’s BMC Exchange!