Veterans possess a set of leadership qualities that are invaluable in today’s fast-paced and dynamic world of tech sales. Resilience, adaptability, and teamwork are forged through the unique challenges of military service and translate seamlessly into the business landscape. As we celebrate Veterans Day, we can learn from the leadership of veterans to benefit every professional, in any field—sales and beyond.

Resilience: Thriving under pressure

In sales, much like in the military, the ability to stay composed and focused when faced with obstacles is critical. Veterans are no strangers to high-pressure environments where decisions must be made quickly and efficiently. Whether it’s closing a deal at the end of a tough quarter or pivoting strategies after a sudden market shift, resilience is the key to navigating these challenges.

Veterans know how to bounce back from setbacks and keep moving forward with purpose. They bring an unshakable determination that inspires teams to persevere when things get tough. In the tech world, where disruptions and rapid advancements are the norm, this kind of resilience is what drives long-term success. We all have moments where a deal doesn’t go our way or a client’s needs shift unexpectedly—but it’s how we respond that matters. The training of our veterans can be a reminder for us to stay steady, keep our eye on the goal, and push forward.

Adaptability: Embracing change and innovation

The tech industry is constantly evolving, and sales teams need to be agile in order to keep up with new products, technologies, and customer needs. Veterans are experts in adaptability, trained to adjust to ever-changing environments—from deploying to a different country to responding to unexpected challenges in the field.

Veterans teach us that adaptability isn’t just about reacting to change—it’s also about embracing it. In tech sales, staying ahead of the curve often means rethinking strategies, adopting new tools, and being open to continuous learning. Veterans bring a mindset that encourages innovation, flexibility, and quick problem-solving. These qualities allow teams to respond proactively to customer needs, stay competitive, and ultimately deliver better results.

Teamwork: The power of collaboration

One of the most powerful lessons veterans bring to the table is the value of teamwork. In the military, success is never achieved alone—it’s the result of strong collaboration, trust, and a deep understanding of how to work together toward a common goal. In tech sales, this same level of teamwork is essential to winning deals and fostering long-term customer relationships.

Veterans excel at working in cross-functional teams, a skill that is crucial in the tech sector, where collaboration between sales, engineering, product development, and customer success teams is vital. They understand how to leverage diverse strengths within a team and create an environment where everyone feels supported and motivated to contribute. This ability to unite teams behind a shared vision drives revenue while also building a positive, high-performing culture within an organization.

Leadership beyond sales

The leadership lessons veterans offer extend beyond the sales environment. In fact, veterans can inspire all of us—regardless of our role or department—to lead with integrity, courage, and purpose. Their experience in facing adversity and managing complexity gives them a unique perspective on what it means to lead effectively.

Veterans remind us that leadership isn’t about individual success; it’s about lifting others up, creating a sense of community, and striving for the greater good. At BMC, we believe in fostering a culture where every employee can grow and develop their leadership skills, and veterans play a key role in setting that example.

A call to action: Learn from veterans, lead with purpose

As we celebrate Veterans Day, let’s take a moment to reflect on the incredible leadership lessons veterans bring to the workplace. Whether you’re a sales professional, an engineer, or a manager, there is so much we can learn from their resilience, adaptability, and teamwork.

Veterans, we honor your service and the leadership you continue to provide. To those who have yet to join the tech industry, we encourage you to explore the wide range of careers, in tech sales and beyond. Your leadership is needed here—to guide teams, drive innovation, build lasting partnerships with clients, and more.

For companies, the message is clear: Veterans are leaders. Their experiences enrich our organizations and make us better equipped to meet the challenges of the future. Let’s continue to create pathways for veterans to bring their unique strengths to our teams and foster environments where they can lead, innovate, and thrive.

Today I am honored to announce the appointment of Ali Siddiqui to president, BMC Helix. Ali is a well-respected leader in Silicon Valley for over three decades. He was a driver in the industry adoption of cloud and the move to software-as-a-service (SaaS), as well as a pioneer in AIOps and ServiceOps. Starting in April 2025, Ali will lead the BMC Helix organization to increase their focus on accelerating innovation, customer value realization, and the application of AI in our digital service and operations management business to continue the company’s growth trajectory.

In my role as president and CEO of BMC and executive chairman for BMC Helix, I will work very closely with Ali to ensure that we structure the two companies to capitalize on the synergies and support each business’ unique profile and characteristics in growth, profile, margins, and competitive landscape. And I look forward to working with the new BMC leadership team to define the future for Control-M and the SaaS offering of Control-M, as well as build on the strength of our BMC AMI portfolio for the mainframe.

As announced on October 9, 2024, our planning is well underway and with Ali taking on his new role, we are on track to begin the process of standing up two companies in early 2025.

Each company will be laser focused on the success of our customers and partners through the transition and into the future through deeper specialization and stronger industry focus. The most important consideration through the entire transition process is our customers’ and partners’ success. We will ensure business continuity and proceed with the best interests of our customers, partners, and employees in mind.

Thank you for being a part of the journey – it only gets better from here!

Sincerely,
/Ayman

We announced on October 9 that we are creating two stand-alone, independent companies: BMC and BMC Helix. With our success and trajectory over the last four years, I’m eager to see the two companies set a path for ongoing success.

After an exciting few days at BMC Connect 2024 in Las Vegas, it was great to hear reactions from customers eager for more specialization and from partners enthusiastic about increased focus and global expansion.

Our customers who want to leapfrog their competitors in AIOps and ServiceOps are excited for what this means in BMC Helix platform innovation—and how they can take advantage of our AI-enabled offerings even sooner while co-innovating on what comes next!

Many of our mainframe development customers are excited to start using the AI-driven development and operations management tools. And our automation customers are seeing how BMC can support massive enterprise-wide transformations—and support their needs to move faster with capabilities like Control-M Data Assurance.

This decision marks a significant milestone in our growth journey, and I wanted to take a moment to personally address the questions I’ve received from customers, partners, and employees about what this means for the future. Today, we are working on finalizing plans and our commitment to you is that nothing changes for customers and partners through the fiscal year.

Staying focused on your success

• The foundation of what makes BMC exceptional remains firmly in place—and we’re doubling down on fundamentals to deliver greater value to customers with increased focus on success and specific domain expertise in both companies.
• Our innovation engine is humming and revving to go even faster. We are committed to the releases and new offerings on the roadmap that we know customers need and want.
• By increasing our focus on specific market segments and industries, BMC and BMC Helix allow us to reimagine how we engage with customers—offering more tailored solutions and deeper expertise in the areas where we can make the biggest impact.
  • BMC, the company that includes the mainframe software and automation/orchestration software business units, will build on our history of innovation in connecting and amplifying hybrid IT with the most innovative portfolio of AI-driven infrastructure software, partners, and expertise.
  • BMC Helix, the company encompassing the digital service and operations management business, will be focused on accelerating innovation, customer success, and the application of AI in our digital service and operations management business.
• As a strategic partner for continued innovation across mainframe, distributed, cloud, and edge infrastructure, we will continue to prioritize our customers’ needs at the core of each company’s mission—setting the bar higher for customers’ returns on investments in enterprise infrastructure software and ServiceOps/AIOps.
• Ultimately, this is about accelerating growth—for both companies and for all our stakeholders, including employees, investors, partners, and customers. Our ability to better service our customers leads to success in their respective markets.

I am incredibly excited about the opportunities that lie ahead for both BMC and BMC Helix. We remain fully committed to delivering the same level of excellence, innovation, and collaboration that you’ve come to expect from us, while seizing this opportunity to grow and evolve in new ways.

I want to reinforce that our guiding principle throughout this process is to ensure business continuity with the best interests of our customers, our partners, and our people in mind.

Thank you for your continued support as we embark on this exciting new chapter together.

Sincerely,
/Ayman

It’s been an exciting first two days at BMC Connect, with almost a thousand customers, partners, and peers gathered in Las Vegas to discover the new BMC. Tuesday morning, in a packed house at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, BMC CEO Ayman Sayed and several members of the BMC leadership team took to the stage to deliver rousing keynotes about the path forward.

Sayed recounted that BMC—and the larger technology industry—are coming into a wave of growth as the market shifts toward a more positive outlook. With that turn toward the positive, tools like data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), generative AI (GenAI), and automation are empowering businesses to capitalize on emerging opportunities, and BMC is in a prime position for it.

He says our breadth of AI-, GenAI- and machine learning (ML)-infused solutions have been born out of investments, innovation, customer focus, collaboration, and a modern culture. By connecting our past to our future, BMC is prepared to meet our customers where they are at this moment in time and help them accelerate their success.

Sayed brought out some of BMC’s largest customers to share where they are today, and what’s on their minds. A recurring theme of the discussion was the importance of the employee experience, with a focus on adapting to a changing workforce and delivering better employee experiences to unlock better customer experiences. As one customer puts it, “GenAI is new shiny thing. But keep your focus on the experience and make it meaningful.”

“ #GenAI is freeing up time to focus on what really matters. It can solve problems at lightning speed. The key is understanding how to operationalize and use that power for your organizations.“— Ankita Sharda, Cloud Customer Experience Lead of @googlecloud pic.twitter.com/y27CiAHwFd

— BMC Software (@BMCSoftware) October 15, 202

4

Next, BMC Chief Product Officer Ali Siddiqui recapped our commitment to GenAI, reiterating that BMC was an intentional, early adopter of the technology and has now integrated it across the BMC AMI, Control-M, and BMC Helix portfolios in ways that deliver the most value—and amazing experiences—to our customers, line-of-business stakeholders, and our customers’ customers and employees.

Our GenAI- and agentic AI-driven solutions are also helping customers increase productivity, automate business services and data management workflows, and improve service level agreements (SLAs). You can read more about the individual solution enhancements announced today in Siddiqui’s blog here.

Jeff Hardy, VP and GM for the Americas at BMC, closed out Tuesday morning’s keynote with a roundtable with the leaders of the BMC Helix, Control-M, and BMC AMI portfolios. Margaret Lee, SVP and GM of Digital Service and Operations Management at BMC, spoke about the ascent of AI, sharing that 81 percent of respondents in our recent survey developed with Forbes are using it to simplify their business.

Gur Steif, the President of Digital Business Automation at BMC, referenced Control-M’s stability as legacy solution, pointing out that legacy means it’s still in place because it’s working. He says Control-M customers are using it to bring together structured and unstructured data to find new insights, as demonstrated by customers like Domino’s, Navistar, and CARFAX. “Seeing our customers innovate is my favorite part of the job,” he added.

John McKenny, SVP and General Manager of Intelligent Z Optimization and Transformation at BMC, spoke about the power of AI to unlock more data use cases in the mainframe space, and the importance of modernizing the mainframe for early-career developers and enhancing productivity for experienced employees.

In his breakout session, “Strategy and Roadmap for the BMC AMI Portfolio,” he referred to the mainframe as the fourth cloud, speaking to its enduring strength as a mission-critical platform. This reinforces the findings of our recently released 19^th annual BMC Mainframe Survey, available here. During his sneak peek at the BMC AMI roadmap, he discussed what’s new and next, as well as the innovations announced Tuesday, which are designed to support current developers and the generation coming behind them.

#BMCConnect2024 Attendees: Don’t forget to visit the BMC Collective Lounge and Customer Success Lounge for exclusive points and swag. pic.twitter.com/qXfflbXPMz

— BMC Software (@BMCSoftware) October 15, 2024

The Expo Hall, open throughout BMC Connect, is a popular destination with attendees, giving them a chance to get out from behind their screens, meet peers and experts—and pick up some cool new swag! They were also excited to get hands on in the real-life demos of our solutions, and join the AMA with our leadership team.

“There are many examples of how we’ve innovated in IT and then put that into our products.” – Scott Crowder, SVP and CIO pic.twitter.com/49lqsa0OUw

— BMC Software (@BMCSoftware) October 15, 2024

BMC Connect continues Wednesday with another full day of conversations, keynotes, educational opportunities, and more. Stay tuned to our social channels for the latest news: LinkedIn, X/Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Threads.

We continuously hear from our customers that they face rapidly changing expectations from their consumers and the market. To continue to thrive and innovate, they must have technology that helps them be agile, build resilience, and accelerate business. As we become the new BMC, we aim to unlock human and machine potential to drive business growth, innovation, and sustainable success.

To that end, I want to outline some recent BMC offerings that simplify the complex, improve productivity, offer an amazing employee and customer experience, and lead to agility and resilience. Announced today at our BMC Connect event in Las Vegas, these solutions will empower enterprise leaders to unify and act on data with the power of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) across an increasingly complex digital landscape—from cloud to mainframe to edge.

BMC has been delivering secure and trusted solutions for decades. We offer many solutions that incorporate AI and the latest GenAI functionality to extend and enhance customer capabilities. By building market-leading products our customers can rely on, we give organizations the tools they need to work more efficiently so they can focus on innovation. Our customizable portfolio also allows organizations to create their unique solutions tailored to their needs. This flexibility enables customers to solve their business challenges as they innovate across their technology stack.

Accelerate IT and business effectiveness

Introducing agentic AI: Our latest release of BMC Helix introduces agentic AI powered by BMC HelixGPT to transform enterprise IT work. It drives a set of autonomous agents that work proactively alongside human users to improve user experience, insights, and outcomes. It also extends the deployment flexibility of BMC HelixGPT so that service and operations management organizations can use the infrastructure of their choice. As part of the BMC Helix platform, BMC HelixGPT can be deployed via SaaS, on-premises, hybrid cloud, private cloud, and (soon) the Snowflake data cloud.

AIOps: The lack of efficiency and increased vulnerability due to visibility gaps in IT and security operations can leave IT teams constantly playing catch up. Our latest BMC Helix AIOps solution release addresses these challenges while also improving the overall operator experience with BMC HelixGPT. “AIOps will help us anticipate and address issues before they become problematic. We are excited about the capabilities BMC Helix will bring,” said Gisela Riggan, Chief Information Officer at BMC customer Prosperity Bank.

BMC Helix Control-M Data Assurance (Beta): This new service works with Control-M to strengthen customers’ data pipelines. With it, users can define dozens of data quality metrics and inspect and evaluate their data in motion at critical checkpoints throughout their workflows. By catching errors before they continue downstream, users can fix quality issues and prevent negative events from impacting customers and the business, thereby building more trust in significant data orchestration results. This is especially important in today’s data-driven world, with the ever-increasing volume of data that organizations work with. “Control-M is mission-critical to Domino’s data-driven culture. It will play a key role in helping us continue to grow and deliver cutting-edge innovation,” said Deepti Soni, Sr. Manager of Data Quality, Data Operations, and MLOps at Domino’s Pizza.

BMC Helix Control-M Data Assurance (Beta)

Transform and modernize critical core systems

BMC AMI Assistant: Organizations can unlock the full potential of the mainframe with the GenAI-powered BMC AMI Assistant, which is designed to be seamlessly infused into BMC AMI solutions. Whether explaining complex code or identifying the root cause of system anomalies, the assistant will provide actionable recommendations and automate manual, time-consuming tasks, empowering teams to work smarter and innovate faster. BMC AMI Assistant is pivotal to modernizing and transforming core mainframe systems, ensuring they remain agile and future-ready while preserving the reliability and performance that are critical to business operations. As of October 2024, BMC AMI Assistant will be available within:

• BMC AMI DevX Code Insights: Supercharged with BMC AMI Assistant, the GenAI-driven code explanation service offers developers the ability to demystify complex and unfamiliar code with a single right-click. Developers can confidently maintain and modify mainframe applications, eliminating the fear of change and accelerating time to delivery for impactful solutions. “It was imperative for us to give developers time to innovate and to focus on what it is they need to do. And that is to write code, build, and test that before shipping it,” Jakes Oliver, DevOps Engineer at Nedbank Ltd., explains about BMC AMI DevX.
• BMC AMI Ops Insight (Beta): Enhanced by BMC AMI Assistant, BMC AMI Ops Insight, now in Beta, delivers GenAI-powered root cause analysis, providing clear explanations for performance issues and system outages. Operators instantly understand problems and receive actionable recommendations, significantly reducing downtime and ensuring system resilience.

BMC AMI DevX Code Insights

Unlock innovation through orchestration and automation

BMC Helix Control-M Unified View: Our new “hybrid architecture” allows organizations to seamlessly manage workflows across Control-M self-hosted and BMC Helix Control-M SaaS with a consolidated, single-pane-of-glass view of all their workflows. With BMC Helix Control-M Unified View, customers can dynamically evolve their application and data pipeline orchestration strategy to fit their desired technology environment and operating model today and into the future. This future readiness is important to BMC and our customers, as emphasized by José Fortemps, Head of Infrastructure and Operations at AG Insurance, “We are confident that Control-M is the best way to go, not only to orchestrate the replatformed applications and data, but also to support other future workloads and activities. Control-M is a great investment for the future.”

BMC Helix Edge: BMC’s AI-powered solution takes orchestration and automation to the edge. It simplifies complex data collection and analysis anywhere in the network so you can predict and prevent problems before they occur and automates inventory management and lifecycle management of physical devices to free up more time to innovate.

BMC Helix Edge

Creating the best solutions to fit your needs

We are excited about these announcements and the other updates and features we are unveiling at BMC Connect 2024. Additionally, you can keep up to date on the latest research from BMC—a co-sponsored study with Forbes on the current state of how IT leaders view AIOps, our just-released 19th annual State of the Mainframe survey, with 1,000+ respondents from 12 industries, and the second annual Value of Data survey, which explores how organizations can assess and enhance their data maturity to help overcome challenges in using data for competitive advantage.

BMC helps enterprises maximize value from their data, transform operations from reactive to proactive, and deliver amazing customer and employee experiences, all with the power of AI. We are building on decades of innovation to empower organizations across the globe with the technology to excel and to create the best platform for your organization—your own.

Over the last five years, BMC has transformed into a growing, industry-leading, enterprise software provider. We have introduced over 20 new products and capability offerings that have contributed to 18 consecutive quarters of annual recurring revenue (ARR) growth, and industry best retention rates as we reimagined how we go-to-market to best serve our customers.

Because of our success to date, we have reached critical mass in size as we continue to grow—and we are ready for the next phase of our evolution.

Today we announced very exciting news: We are creating two stand-alone companies—BMC and BMC Helix to increase our focus on customer success as we accelerate growth for long-term success.

Some may ask why we are making this decision. Simply put, we have determined that the two companies will better serve their markets individually. Each of these businesses has its own profile and characteristics in growth opportunities, margins and profitability, and competitive landscape. We are confident that the underlying economics of both businesses sets each company up to continue driving innovation and growth for long-term success.

Our customers and partners look to us in their transformation journeys to enable business faster than humanly possible. As a strategic partner for ongoing innovation in their mainframe, distributed, cloud, and edge technology needs, the creation of two companies puts them at the core of each company’s mission with deeper specialization and vertical industry focus.

BMC will be the name of the company that includes the mainframe software and automation/orchestration business units. And will build on our history of innovation in connecting and amplifying hybrid IT with the most innovative portfolio of AI-driven infrastructure software, partners, and expertise to grow faster than market.

BMC Helix will be the name of the company for the digital service and operations management business unit. It will be focused on accelerating growth, innovation, and the application of AI to gain greater market share.

The creation of two companies will be done in phases and our goal is to officially start the transition to operate as two organizations in early 2025. Our guiding principle through the process is to ensure business continuity and proceed with the best interests of our customers, partners, and employees.

To our employees, thank you for your hard work to chart this path forward. Your commitment is inspiring every day.

To our customers and our partners, thank you for your confidence in us. I look forward to continuing our work together, and to a vibrant and innovative future.

Ayman Sayed
President and CEO
BMC

We’re just around the corner from BMC Connect, BMC’s annual premier customer event, featuring an extraordinary lineup of customer speakers, technical sessions, educational and skills enhancement offerings, networking opportunities, and content and conversations that will enlighten, entertain, and inspire. Here’s a sneak peek at just some of what’s coming when we take over 50,000 square feet of the new Fontainebleau Las Vegas October 14–16. Come join us for the absolutely free event and discover the new BMC.

Get free training and get certified

This year, all attendees will receive a free code to take one of our 150+ web-based, on-demand courses, compliments of BMC Education, and we’ll have free BMC Certified Associate testing for over 30 BMC products. You could also be among the first to get certified on BMC HelixGPT, our generative AI-powered BMC Helix capability that caters to IT, HR, ESM, and ServiceOps use cases. The free course includes a web-based fundamentals module that attendees complete before the event, followed by a four-hour instructor-led training onsite and a certification exam that can be completed at the event or online later.

Gain practical insights about use cases that matter

We’ll have solution-specific sessions that reveal how enterprises are achieving successful outcomes every day, including:

• “Using BMC Helix to Meet FFIEC/DORA Requirements”: Explore the BMC solutions that can help you meet the compliance requirements of the European Union’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) and the U.S. Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC).
• “The Strategic Value of KPIs for Development Managers”: Learn how to improve velocity, quality, and efficiency in mainframe application development with KPI measurement.
• “AI-Powered Change Risk Advisor: Elevating Decision-Making in Complex IT Environments”: Meet the new BMC Helix AI/ML-driven Change Risk Advisor decision support system that saves time and enhances process efficiency by accelerating the approval process.
• “Unleashing Innovation: BMC AMI DevX with Generative AI”: Learn how Gen AI in solutions like BMC AMI DevX can help drive transformative change in mainframe application development.
• “Optimize and Modernize Your Key SAP S/S4HANA® Processes with Control-M”: See how Control-M eliminates the need for specialized knowledge requirements, and securely manages dependencies and silos between SAP and non-SAP systems.
• “Orchestrating Data File Transfers in a Hybrid Landscape”: Learn how Control-M innovation can help you deliver data-driven business services in a hybrid landscape without jeopardizing established practices.
• “Orchestrate Complex Data Pipelines into the Data Cloud to Superpower BMC HelixGPT Use Cases“: Explore how BMC HelixGPT and Control-M together enable a unified approach to AI, but without tool or cloud lock in, and empower enterprises to manage diverse data environments and maximize AI’s potential while ensuring compliance with data strategies.
• Hands-on workshops: Bring your laptop, elevate your expertise, and get even more from your BMC solutions with a unique blend of guided instruction—work at your own pace while receiving personalized support.
• Discover the Expo: Check out immersive BMC solution demos! Learn about new product releases and chat with the experts in zones for resiliency, experience, orchestration, and modernization, plus a zone for developers.

Engage 1:1 with BMC experts and peers

On top of sessions designed to engage, inform, and delight, we’ll have a variety of immersive experiences on tap:

• BMC Collective Customer Lounge: New this year! Network with your peers in an intimate, exclusive setting and learn how our dedicated Customer Success and Customer Advocacy teams support you at every stage of your BMC journey.
• “Birds of a Feather” lunches: Chat with industry peers to dive deep on topics relevant to your business.
• Ask the Experts: Visit our product specialists at the myBMC Resource Bar in the Expo and get an immediate response to your most urgent questions.
• AMA: Ask members of our BMC executive team—CIO Scott Crowder, CTO of the Americas Amanda Blevins, and VP of Pre-Sales Melanie Vogel—anything!
• Pizza with Engineers: Grab a slice with your fellow developers, engineers, and R&D folks during the Tuesday happy hour!

Enjoy all the extras

Build your soft skills, learn how to create a culture of innovation, and get a sneak peek at how our customer support experience is evolving based on customer feedback with:

• “The Brave One”: Become the bravest person in the room with Iona Holloway’s five-step Brave One Method in this blunt and heartfelt session hosted by BMC’s Women in Sales Network.
• “Crafting Your Narrative”: Join us for an interactive session and learn practical steps to be credible, authentic, and ruthless in the pursuit of building your personal brand.
• “The Innovation Playbook”: Explore the dynamic landscape of innovation and learn a proven process to ensure its success in your organization.
• “Customer Love”: You asked and we listened. Get an exclusive preview of our new, comprehensive customer success and support portal with AI-driven tools.

And that’s just the tip of the 45+ sessions that await. Make plans now to attend! Register here, reserve your hotel room at a phenomenally low price, and start customizing your agenda! You don’t want to miss it!

At BMC, we are dedicated to helping our customers transform their businesses throughout the ever-changing needs of the global market with industry-leading solutions in service and operations efficiency, workload optimization, and all things hybrid cloud. But, simply put, transformation does not “stick” if it’s not sustainable.

BMC is on an iterative journey towards sustainability, constantly seeking ways to integrate corporate citizenship into our business practices and transformation efforts. Through BMC Cares and by fostering a holistic commitment to improve greenhouse gas emissions across the business, we are advancing our own sustainability agenda and empowering our customers to do the same.

One of the ways we are making this connection more visible to the market and our customers is through our clean water restoration efforts with Seabin^™, a clean-tech start-up that has revolutionized the way the world tackles ocean pollution. Seabin’s innovative technology collects debris and microplastics from the surface of oceans and waterways, filtering water through a catch bag. This technology, capable of filtering up to 55,000 liters of water per hour, is a testament to the power of innovative solutions in addressing environmental challenges.

Each Seabin unit makes a significant impact in our fight against ocean pollution. To show our professional services customers that we are doing good beyond our business, we honor them and commemorate our bin sponsorships with an official Seabin^™ thank you certificate. This initiative highlights the intersection of responsible business practices and exceptional customer experience.

Since the beginning of our partnership, our sponsored Seabin units have filtered 1.385 billion liters of water and removed over 3191.1 kilograms of marine litter. These achievements are more than just numbers; they represent our commitment to creating a cleaner, healthier planet for future generations while making transformation sustainable in the long run.

Being a responsible business is good for business. It drives innovation, builds trust, and strengthens relationships with customers, partners, and communities. As we leverage our expertise and resources to become a net-zero enterprise by 2030, we remain dedicated to leading by example and empowering others to join us in positively impacting the world.

This World Oceans Day, let’s all take a moment to appreciate the beauty and importance of our oceans and waterways. Let’s commit to making smarter decisions that protect our environment and ensure a sustainable future for all. Together, we can drive meaningful change, make a tangible difference in protecting our planet, and ensure a sustainable future for all.

BMC begins and ends with the customer, and the BMC Customer Success Management team brings that vision to life with a “#OneBMC” commitment to deliver the best experience across the BMC and partner ecosystem every day. We’re proud to announce that the team has just been recognized with a 2024 Pulse GameChanger Award in the Dream Team category, presented at the recent Gainsight Pulse conference. The award “celebrates the extraordinary achievements of a cross-functional team that has redefined collaboration and united behind the common goal of customer success.

Receiving the GameChanger recognition is a validation for the team. “We’re excited to be recognized by the customer success industry and presented as an example to follow. We put a lot of effort into it, and it’s paying off. We want the customer journey to be as frictionless as possible,” explains Carol Keyes, Senior Manager of Customer Success Operations at BMC.

The winning formula

BMC Customer Success Management is intensely focused on empowering customers to achieve their goals through a unified approach to our products and services that aligns with the BMC vision, strategy, execution, and measurement (VSEM) framework. BMC Chief Customer Officer Colin Murphy has had a singular focus on a more customer-centric journey, sharing, “We must embrace #OneBMC if we want to differentiate our service with customers. That means operating as one team with shared objectives aligned to clear metrics, taking an ‘outside-in’ approach to continually reinforce the customer journey.”

Driven by data, the team leverages robust Gainsight reporting and dashboards to enhance data integrations and collaboration across platforms, teams, and the entire company; accurately measure goal progress; and glean insights from customer data to ensure the best possible experience. This unified approach facilitates customer adoption and success by ensuring that every BMC team member is aligned with and actively participating in achieving common goals.

Gainsight integration provides a single, holistic view of the customer and delivers insights into the overall sentiment or health of the account. It is also the single source of truth for cross-functional risk identification and risk mitigation activities across BMC, seamlessly connecting insights from renewals, support, surveys, product, and sales. Through this big-picture view, both issues and opportunities become apparent, enabling the Customer Success Management team to leverage their expertise and intervene, resulting in an elevated customer experience.

Collaborative data breeds results

Highlighting the importance of internal collaboration, Keyes adds, “We’re connected end to end internally to make it as seamless as possible for [customers] externally, so that they don’t even notice that there are multiple teams when they’re onboarding and implementing the product to when they’re adopting and managing and utilizing the product to when they’re renewing. They just know they’re working with BMC.”

“We are really emphasizing the #OneBMC mindset by bringing all the teams together, combining our knowledge, and avoiding duplication of effort. Everybody understands how what they’re doing is contributing to the overall goal, which is our customer,” says Victoria Barry, Director of Operations for Customer Success at BMC. “It sets a clear direction and puts the customer in the center of everything we do. It’s so important for us to be recognized because we’ve spent a lot of time building internal relationships to bring everybody to the same table with the same focus.”

Joel Skaggs, VP of Customer Support Operations at BMC, says connecting the data is key to the team’s—and customers’ success. “When we work together effectively, sharing our information, and pulling teams together across BMC and across product areas, the customer wins because more people understand context,” he explains. “When we provide more insights for our customers, we can service them better and ultimately help them get more value from our software. That’s the goodness for our customers.”

BMC continuously strives to deliver a best-in-class customer success offering that provides customers with the best insights, innovations, and enablement to ensure the successful adoption of BMC solutions. To learn more about how you can build an even stronger engagement and bold outcomes with BMC through the BMC Customer Success Management team, check out our guide, BMC Customer Success Management: Our Promise to You.

As customer data breaches continue to happen—and get larger and larger, customer privacy concerns are again front page news. It seems an opportune time to bring some good news to the table and announce that BMC has obtained binding corporate rules (BCRs) in the UK, in addition to the EU BCRs that we’ve held for almost a decade. Data privacy is no longer a nice to have. It’s a business imperative in today’s always-on digital world, and one that BMC takes very seriously.

What BCRs are

BCRs are a privacy compliance framework derived from European, and now, UK, privacy laws since the UK exited the EU. They are the permission and legal instrument given to global organizations by European and UK regulators to transfer data outside Europe in accordance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

BMC extended our BCR certification from 2015 to satisfy the UK regulation post-Brexit. The new authorization applies both to our own data, like HR, finance, and procurement data, and most importantly, our customer data. Recent research shows us that more customers want to know what companies do with their information, and it’s becoming integral to their brand loyalty.

Why BCRs matter

According to the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) Privacy and Consumer Trust report, 64 percent of consumers surveyed said their trust is enhanced when companies provide clear information about their privacy policies. On top of that, the 2023 MediaMath Consumer Privacy Survey found that 65 percent of consumers said misuse of personal data would be the top reason they would lose trust in a brand.

By establishing BCRs in the UK and Europe, BMC assures customers that we are treating their data with the utmost care and attention to security. BCRs are special because they’re an explicit recognition by regulators that we have established a comprehensive compliance program not only in the EU and the UK, but across the board. Regulators consider BCRs the gold standard because they require a much more labor-intensive process to pursue than alternative legal instruments such as standard contractual clauses (SCCs), which are much easier to attain and are in use by most companies operating in Europe.

The number of companies that have obtained both EU and UK BCRs is extremely small (15 to date)—and BMC is the first US-based IT company to do so with such a comprehensive scope, applicable both to its own data (as a “data controller”), and to its customers’ data (as a “data processor”). Having both EU and UK BCRs is an official seal, validating that BMC is enforcing the same protections for handling and retaining our own data and our customers’ data in the 40 countries where we operate and wherever we transfer it.

Going the extra mile

Attaining the UK BCRs was a very collaborative effort across BMC and with our outside legal partners. We were required to assure regulators of a full governance framework, with a consistent level of compliance for our customer and vendor agreements, maintained with internal training and audits across the entire organization. As part of our submission process, we shared the very specific details and operational processes around personal data handling to demonstrate our compliance with the regulators’ obligations.

We have established internal data governance processes that span legal, information security (InfoSec), information systems and technology (IS&T), marketing, and procurement, as well as other departments, so that it has become embedded into the business. We have quarterly meetings with our executive leadership team, and conduct annual employee data privacy training.

There is also a special, expedited process for handling any customer privacy complaints. And we will keep the BCRs continuously updated, amending them regularly as needed and notifying regulators every year to inform them of any changes.

We are particularly aware and mindful of the important responsibility to secure data against threat, and to treat it in a manner that is not just compliant but also responsible and transparent to our customers and employees, so our BCRs are publicly available online here.

We’re proud to comply with both the EU and UK BCRs as part of the BMC commitment to deliver service excellence and support our environmental, social, and governance (ESG) initiatives. We have gone the extra mile to provide our customers with the highest, most recognized certification for privacy because privacy is a fundamental right and an essential duty for organizations in the digital era.